Rodney West never learned anything in scholarly style and it was for all the intellectual sailors of the Western World that he spoke (or thought that he spoke) when he said, "It's a sad world, anyway. Not many of us will get out of it alive."
"What, darling?"
"Don't bother me. I'm quoting. I mean, I'm thinking."
He saw her lips tremble. He put his hand to the crotch of his trousers. That's where he did his thinking. That was the only way to think: with your cock. He'd like to be able to take his out right now and shove it into Lisa's mouth, shove it up as far as it would go into that little pink cunt of a mouth. Instead he simply held his hand to his cock and felt it harden as her gray eyes filled with tears. Then, as it became completely hard he took his hand away from it, his eyes away from her, and quietly watched the sun from the street make fishy patterns on the walls to softly lighten the green gloom of the Mexican cafe.
Should he return to New York or go off to Tehuantepec with her? He glanced at General Miaja, who was sitting two tables away, at Miaja, "The Defender of Madrid." Too bad that he, Rodney West, hadn't had the guts to help defend it...
"Oh well," he said (they had been talking about Spain) and Lisa said, "I'll go back when they restore the monarchy."
"Well right now, my sweet little anarchist turned monarchist, you can go back with me, back into the toilet." "No!"
He let a smile that was more sneer than smile disfigure his small sensual lips.
"Oh yes you will. You know why we come here. We can't go to my place, it's too far away, and that lousy husband of yours is always at your place, so..."
"I know, Rodney, but it's so sordid back there, and that woman, she's..."
"Shut up," he said and narrowed his eyes to look at the green wicker chairs, the green and black tiles of the floor, the dark green walls.
The cafe was becoming less sombre. Sunshine streamed through the open doorway that led to l'Avenida de Cinco de Mayo where the mid-afternoon traffic of Mexico City, siesta time over, was loud with the tooting of horns and the shrill shouts of newsboys.
"Grafico! Grafico! Ultimas Noticias! Grafico!"
The bitter taste of black coffee in his mouth, Rodney lowered the small cup that was the color of ivory and moved his tongue over the front of his tobacco-stained teeth. He looked up at the green ceiling. This cafe had all the chill marine cheer of an aquarium. It made him think of childhood excursions on Sundays in early spring. It made him think of his cock before they called it "the rod." It made him think of how he'd rubbed it and rubbed it until it had bled. ("You can't shoot yet?" the big boys had laughed at him. "Watch me come!" big Jocko had cried. There in the woods he had watched Jocko's sperm shoot into the air. How he'd wanted to be able to come like the rest of them! Yet how good, how hurting yet good, were those long comeless orgasms, those sweet sweet pains that he'd had even before he'd rubbed it and rubbed it to hardness, rubbed and rubbed it until it had bled.)
A dust-flecked shaft of sunlight shot through a skylight window, bathing General Miaja's bald head.
"Oh, fuck the old bastard," he said. "Fuck heroes everywhere. Fuck the Spanish Civil War. Fuck this one..."
"Quiet, darling, quiet," she said.
"And fuck you!"
"Rodney..."
Under the table, he dug his fingernails into her thigh. He watched her close her eyes. He saw her tears flow. He felt his cock throb.
What was the matter with him? Who did he think he was, Hamlet? Why couldn't he be a thrower of pies instead of a walking stalking photograph of the writer in embryo? All this damned Ibsen-green business, this gnashing of teeth, tearing of hair ... To do or not to do, to go or not to go. Damn all this coming face to face with Miajas and Madrids, with Saccos, with Vanzettis, with the ghost of Byron...
"Graza senor?"
"SL"
He put his right foot forward, thinking of how he never put his best foot forward, but then, looking at Lisa, he knew that this was a lie, for her gray eyes were almost blue with yearning as she wiped the tears from her face and blew her nose. And why was this? Because now he was giving her his supplicating smile, his seducing, his seducingly successful, "I want my mamma" smile.
He decided to pout. He did. Then he looked down at the boy who had begun to shine his shoes. He admired the boy's sleek hair. He admired the fine smooth brownness of the boy's skin. '
"Yes, Rodney," Lisa was saying, "I'll go back to Spain when they have a king there."
This time he said nothing. He felt his cock go soft. (The plains of Spain are silent now. Spain is the corpse of a century. The war is over, has been won, and not by you, just as this war, this bigger and more important war, if anything can be said to be more or less important, will some day be over and be won, but not by you...)
He shook his head from side to side. The Indian shoeshine boy was grinning up at him, softly tapping the shoe that had been shined. Lisa's head, more ash than blonde, was at a curious angle. She was smiling at him quizzically. Her teeth looked papery, like the rest of her.
"What's the matter, dearest?"
She touched his hand lightly with one finger tip. He took hold of it. He squeezed it. Then he twisted her whole finger.
"Don't, Rodney. Please. Please don't hurt me..."
"You know that you like to be hurt, you little bitch. First you like to play mamma. Then you like..."
"Yes. Yes, darling. Yes,"-she was trying to pull her finger away-"yes, Rodney, yes. But not here..."
"All right," he said, "all right,"-his voice was low and harsh-"as soon as the kid's finished with my shoes we'll go back inside to see Conchita and I'll bugger you until the shit comes out of your ears."
She said nothing. She lowered her eyes, then her head, and he, looking down at the shoeshine boy, again admiring his bronzeness, his youthfulness, his beauty, saw that the boy was watching them with mixed fear and curiosity. Once more he felt his cock get hard. He let go of her finger. He shifted his feet so that the boy could shine the other shoe. He lit an Elegante and drew on it deeply. Then, simply to say something, he said, "What should we do about Tehuantepec, Lisa? What should we do?" "I don't know..." They became silent again. "Para hoy! Para hoy, senor!" He nodded no at an old hag who stood by the table, her face smeary with syphilitic sores that were the color of her gums.
"Para hoy! Para hoy!"-she held the lottery tickets in a filthy hand that shook-"Para hoy!" She moved away, barefooted, like the newsboy, to whose, "Ultimas Noticias! Novedades!" he also nodded no.
The green cafe was blue with cigarette smoke now. Every table was occupied by gesturing men. Except for Lisa and a couple of others, the only women in the place were the white-aproned waitresses, their tits and asses tight in their black uniforms, who went up and down the narrow swarming aisles where sombreroed Indians tried to sell serapes and men coming in from the street looked for acquaintances or for a table. Here, there, sat an obvious European, thick tortoise-shell rimmed glasses gleaming in the sunlight that was laden with smoke.
"Para hoy! Para hoy! Ultimas Noticias! Novedades!"
The headlines were about the fighting on the Kerch Peninsula where the Germans had won still another victory. Again Rodney looked at General Miaja. So there he was. Unmilitary paunch. Patriarchal manner. In every outward way unlike the man who, in his mind's eye, all through the Spanish War, had been inflexibly austere and stern. Sinewy. Draconian. Yes, there he was, just a man at a nearby table who, a few minutes before, had been pointed out to him by Lisa.
"There's Miaja," she had said, awkwardly attempting to be casual. But the tender tone of her voice had revealed memory of Madrid.
Memory of Madrid. If he, too, but had memory of Madrid instead of the memories that he had of Dostoievskian days when he'd done nothing but call himself a coward. Memory of Madrid. If he, too, but had memory of Madrid instead of the memories that he had of those Salvador Dali days when, headfirst, he had been a "sphinx embedded in the sand," artfully outfitted with the glass of warm sweet milk, the woman's slipper ... (and so ... and so, small slimy beasts, feed upon the flower that once-the first day-must have been my heart...)
He apparently looked miserable, for Lisa now placed a fragile hand on his brown wrist, held it there as if she were about to feel his pulse, and softly, softly, said to him again, "What's the matter, mon petit?"
"The same...," he began, but then, "Nothing!" he snarled, and pulled his hand away.
The shoeshine boy was tapping at his other shoe. Rodney took his foot down from the box and reached into his pocket for a peso.
"Keep the change," he said, and then he said, "Por nada," to the boy whose teeth gleamed white against the brownness of his oval face.
"Por nada," Rodney said again, looking at the boy's tight blue faded pants, noticing the bulging outline of his cock as he stood up.
"Say," he said, "how old are you?"
"Sixteen, senor."
The kid might come in useful, Rodney thought. He watched the boy move off, wondering how big his cock was. He resumed his lounging position in the wicker chair, crossed one leg over the other and indolently dangled it. Then, squeezing his cock against his balls, he looked at Lisa who had a solicitous expression on her face, a searching, seeking, look.
"Tell me, Rodney, please..."
"Oh," he relented, still thinking about the boy, "it's the same old thing"-he tried to make each French word sound clipped, abrupt-"sorry I missed Spain."
Sounded kind of tough, kind of newspaperman-nish mannish, saying it that way. Kind of Bleeck's-Bar-On-Fortieth-Street-boys-in-the-back-room brave ... He lit another cigarette-flick, in the yellow fog by Big Ben, flick, pull down, Sardou, your gray fedora-wondering if his feeble French had been able to convey that foreign-correspondent nonchalance to her, that trench-coat swagger ... Damn this language business, anyway ... Sometimes-he glanced at her-it spoiled the bed business. For no language but one's own could satisfactorily Stravinsky the creak, the rites of springs ... Stillhe looked at her delicate pink lips-he hadn't done such a bad job with this one. Yes, he'd made her say plenty in her native Hungarian, and in Spanish and French. Yes, he'd made her say plenty each time he'd jammed his cock into her.
He wanted to jam it up into her now, up into her tight but juicy pink cunt, up, up, her tight little ass, up as far as he could. And after that he'd make her lick her own shit off it. (Last time she'd refused. This time he'd make her do it.)
"Come on," he said, but then, seeing how solicitous her expression was as she gently caressed the faint fuzz of hair on the back of his hand, he decided to play with her for awhile, and so he let his sunburned uneven-featured face look as child-like, as trusting, as much in brown-eyed search of mamma, as he could make it look.
"You mustn't think about it so much," she was saying, "It's over, cheri, now it's over..."
"Yes," he replied, "it's over. This war ... It's not the same thing now."
"No," she said, "it's not the same thing now."
He raised his thin black eyebrows and with one finger twisted a curl of his dark brown uncombed hair. She seemed to mistake this physical extension of his thought for a gesture of remorse. Motherly resting her hand on the sleeve of his jacket, she began to speak to him in a low choked voice.
"Please, Rodney, don't think about it any more. You were right not to go. You were right not to..."
"When'll we go?" he interrupted. "When'll we leave here for Tehuantepec?"
"Then you will go? You will, you will..."
Ugh. If only there wasn't such a splutter of saliva whenever she became at all excited. And if only she were just a bit more beautiful. Not younger. No, thirty wasn't old (after all, he was twenty-seven).-Let's see, Olivia would be thirty now. Where was she? Still in Nice?-Yes, if only Lisa were as beautiful as Olivia, or even beautiful enough (her faded prettiness was not enough) to bolt with her, to say to hell with draft boards and the whole wide weary world...
"Yes," he said, with a guilty glance, "yes, but..."
Ah, no, no Galapagos Isle for him (with her). With no abundance of soap and razor blades (for her; for her to wash her cunt and shave under her arms and shave the hair off her cunt when he wanted it that way). No, no Galapagos, no Tehuantepec, with her for him. And yet ... Ah, mamma mia!
He doused his cigarette in the sediment at the bottom of his cup. Lighting another, he gazed at the green ceiling.
"You must be sure," she was saying above the loud low hum of the cafe, "you must be sure that you will be safer here, in Mexico, in Tehuantepec, than by returning to New York..."
He lowered his gaze to the green wall opposite, then to General Miaja, then to the green-and-black tiled floor. With her index ringer he tapped his cigarette until a spark flew.
At last, "That's the thing," he said, "I'm not sure. You see, I'd be a deserter. Say,"-he looked up at her, his right eyebrow higher than his left, "did you ever read a story by Drieu la Rochelle called Le Deserteur?"
"No..."
"Well, it's a damned good story. About a guy who got out of it the last time. Holds true today."
"Everything holds true always."
"Yes," he continued, paying no attention to her, "holds true today. Too bad Drieu la Rochelle turned out to be a collaborationist. Still, it doesn't surprise me..."
"No," she said, "it's not surprising. Collaborationists are clever."
"Oh," he said, "some are more than clever. No one has ever called Lucifer a fool, nor has anyone yet accused the Devil's disciples of stupidity."
"Yes," she laughed, "Luis always says the Pope's an atheist..."
Luis. For the time being he'd forgotten him. As so she must have, too. Still-he watched her face as the laughter faded from it-if it hadn't been for her Spanish husband, Luis, they'd probably be there, in Tehuantepec, by now. So, in a way, he was grateful to Luis for having kept him from doing what he surely would have done three weeks ago, when all of this with Lisa had begun.
"Oh," she said now, crushing out her cigarette, "here we are again. How can I tell him?"-he could see the veins pulsing in her throat-"how can I leave him after all, after all...?"
Silently he said it. "After all these years." Yes, how could she leave him after Spain? Oh, how he loathed himself for coming between her and Luis, Luis, who had been a defender of Madrid, a modern hero, whereas he, Rodney West, had been nothing.
However, "You've got to tell him," he said to her, "that's all there's to it."
Gone was his momentary sympathy for Luis. Lost in renewed realization of another man's desire for her. And this, and her clouded countenance, clouded, he could see, with thought of Luis, revived his own diminishing desire. This, that, and the difficulty of it all. But not the danger. No.
"I will. I will," she said, "yes, I'll tell him."
Too easy. She looked as if she meant it. Pretty nice for him, though. Luis, he recalled-from that first day, that one time that he'd seen hip-was a real good looking guy. And he'd probably thrown many a good fuck into her. But he didn't look like the kind of a guy who went in for buggering and beating. And she sure liked her buggering and beating...
"I'll tell him," she said again, "I'll tell him today as soon as I go home." "No! No, not today." "Why not today?" "Because..."
How could he tell her that he was afraid of Luis? And how could he tell her that she wasn't beautiful enough for him?
She seemed to guess the last, however, for, "Oh Rodney," she said, "you know that you don't like me well enough. You know that you only like decorative women."
"Oh, don't be silly..."
"Yes," she said, "that's true. And why not...?"
She shrugged her shoulders sadly. She did everything so sadly. And to him this was one of the most attractive things about her, for to him delights were more delightful when they were dolorous, and what ecstasy he'd had in his crazy but controlled career had always been touched by tragedy, or by a sentimental sense of tragedy.
"Oh, Lisa," he said, "it's not true. That sort of thing"-he tried to make himself feel as if he'd lived the life of a D'Annunzio-"is over, all over, entirely over, for me..."
He tried to make himself feel that Fortune Riley, that Olivia, had been paragons of beauty-as they had been to everyone but him, for although he had never lived, nor been seen much, with any but beautiful women, his desire for beautiful women was not as strong as his desire for those who just missed being beautiful, for those who, like Lisa, could show gluttony, the real gluttony of one who had been starved (oh, that little gray-haired hunchback he'd picked up one day! Had he ever had a better lay? He doubted it...). And as, now, he said to her, "That sort of thing is over, all over, entirely over, for me," he fancied himself a pouch-eyed debauchee, an aged Brummell, a desiccated Windsor, unutterably weary and blase.
As veil-eyed as he could make himself be veil-eyed, he repeated once again, "That sort of thing, decorative women, all of that"-with studied insouciance he waved the hand in which he held his half-smoked Elegante-"is over, all over, entirely over for me..."
Damn fool that he was. He should know enough by this time ... But-ah, shade of De Sade!-the unhappier, the lovelier...
"Oh, Lisa, Lisa, Lisa..."
Quickly as the cruelty had come, as near to nature, so now upon the scene-so now, all nude, excepting for the figment of a fig leaf-arrived Mister R. W. Tenderness (otherwise known as Rodney the Pure of Heart).
"Oh, Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, you are lovely to me, lovely..." Rape-rested, seeing her wet eyes, he meant every word he said. "I want you very much. I want so very much to be with you. Please believe me. Please."
The cold palm of her hand caressed his cheek, caressed his chin. He stirred in his seat, averted his eyes, he half closed them as, biting on his lower lip, he had the fanciful notion that everyone in the cafe, including General Miaja, was staring at them.
"I need a shave," he said.
"I like it this way," she answered gently, pressing her fingers against his chin before lowering her hand.
Sure she liked it this way. Almost all of them liked it this way. For although he knew that needing a shave made him more outwardly rugged, more I've-seen-the-worst-of-it-I've-been-all-through-all-of-it masculine, he also knew that needing a shave made him appear more distraughtly boyish, more moppety ducky, more winning. Which was why he needed a shave most of the time. Also-and what was more to the point-he knew that most of them liked it this way because they wanted to feel his bristly chin the tender lips of their cunts.
"You don't want me to tell him?" she asked, with a trace of the hurt in her voice, "you don't want me to tell him today?"
"No, tell him," he said, "I've changed my mind Tell him, Lisa." He felt something slightly sink in his stomach, but, "Tell him, Lisa," he said, "tell him today."
"You're sure it's all right? You're sure you won't get into trouble?"
"The only thing that bothers me now is the money," he lied.
"Oh, we can always get along..." She was very near to looking very happy. "Don't worry about money," she said, "that's the last thing we have to worry about."
"But I only have that five hundred dollars left, back in New York. I'll send for it. But what'll we do when that's gone?"
"Oh Rodney, if we need it I can borrow more money. But in Tehuantepec five hundred dollars should last us forever..."
Forever. My God! What was he thinking of? And she'd probably always look happy there. Jesus!
"What's the matter, cheri, what's the matter?" she asked, with a pink-lipped delible pout.
"Nothing, nothing,"-No backing out now ... "Tell him," he said, "tell him today."
"You're sure."
"I'm sure," he replied with something of gruffness. "You love me?" she asked, with something of petulance. "Lisa!"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, cheri. It's just that I'm"-she looked pensive-"so happy. And it's been so long since I've..."
"Oh," he said, with a placated smile, "I understand. But let's never talk about love..."-aged Brummell, dessicated Windsor-"Let's just..."
"Don't say any more, Rodney, I know that you mean..."
Did she? Amazing. For he didn't. Unless...unless she was thinking of fucking and sucking and...No, damn her, she wasn't. Not now. Her eyes looked like a madonna's.
"It will,"-with something of persistence she said it;-"be so good, Rodney, so good..."
Oh, will it? Cautiously, with brown eyes gone dull black, gone shifty, he looked at her half-exposed ear, at the light mole near the pink fleshy lobe of it. Oh, will it? He lit another cigarette. It had a rank taste. He threw it on the floor, ground it out with the heel of his shoe. Then he began to laugh silently. like that Huxley character, Maurice Spandrell, in Point Counter Point.
"Rodney, Rodney, you look so...so strange."
Still laughing silently, he stared at her. He stared at her closely, coldly, straight into her eyes. They seemed to grow grayer. She drew back in her chair, as far back as she could. She seemed to shrink. Oh, he'd beat the ass off her today, that's what he'd do! He should have brought a riding crop, but-he touched the buckle of his belt-his belt would do. He saw her watch him finger it. He saw her look lower, at the crotch of his trousers, at where his cock was pressing tight against the cloth. But then he saw her look away and, again, he saw her eyes were filled with tears.
"Oh, so I look strange, do I?" To conceal his hard-on, he pulled his chair closer to the table. "Well, why shouldn't I look strange? Listen,"-he grabbed her by the wrist-"I haven't been laid for three days and you know it, you hypocritical cunt. Stop being so sweet and motherly. You know damn well what you came here for. You know damn well that you..."
"Oh, but Rodney, you know that it's more than just for that." "Shut up!"
He tightened his hold on her wrist.
"Rodney ... Rodney, darling," she said, "I know why you're like this. Yes I do. I know why you're like this, but just for today can't we talk about Tehuantepec and..."
"To hell with Tehuantepec and all that shit! Come on! Come on, let's go back to see Our Lady of The Toilet."
He threw some money on the table. Then, buttoning his jacket to partly hide his hard-on, he stood up. Lisa didn't move. Her head was lowered.
"Come on! Get up!"
Slowly now she got to her feet and took his out-stretched hand. Her large gray eyes were saying no, were pleading; her mouth was quivering.
"Must we, Rodney? Must we, today?"
"Yes,"-he pulled her away from the table, "yes, God damn it, we must."
He could feel his cock pushing against his trouser leg as he led her to the back of the cafe and through a swinging door. There, in a small tiled airless space, an old woman sat beneath the dim yellow light of an uncovered bulb. She was knitting. As they came in, she looked up and the stumps of her teeth faintly lightened her dark face.
"Ah!" She put her knitting down on the small table in front of her. She bowed a little. A leering smile contorted her Aztec face. "Ah!" she said again as she stood up, "good afternoon, my friends, good afternoon..."
"Hello Conchita," Rodney said and handed her some money.
"Muchas gracias, senor, muchas gracias..."
"Por nada. Now just take us back where we went last time."
"Si Senor, you are always welcome in Conchita's house. Conchita's house is yours."
There were two doors, one marked Men, the other Women. She led them to the one marked Men, then stopped and said, "Wait, there's someone in there."
"Who?" said Rodney.
"The shoeshine boy, senor."
Rodney put his hand on her bent shoulder. "Listen," he said, "Listen, Conchita..."
"Si, senor?"
"Do you ... do you think that the boy would go-would go back to your house with us?" "No, Rodney!-No!" said Lisa. "Shut up!"
He turned and slapped her. The old woman grinned. "No, Rodney!"
Lisa ran to the swinging door. Rodney seized her by one of her thin shoulders, spun her around to him and slapped her again.
The old woman clapped her hands. She seemed to do a little dance of delight. Her eyes gleamed, like two black coals. Then she said, "Can Conchita come, too? Can Conchita stay this time? Conchita can help you, senor. Conchita can do many things for you, senor."
"Oh, Rodney, Rodney!" Lisa screamed, "You can't do this to me! You can't! You can't...!"
Rodney covered her mouth with his hand and signaled Conchita. Together they got hold of her and dragged her into the men's room where the dark handsome boy turned half away from one of the urinals, his long dark prick, almost black, still streaming piss.
"Pretty boy, pretty boy, pretty Miguelito," said Conchita, "don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. You want some money, Miguelito? You want to make some money?"
She went over to the boy who was still urinating. He had taken his hand away from his cock, but his yellow piss still streamed onto the stained shiny white of the tile. He didn't look at Conchita. He just kept staring at Rodney and Lisa with wide astonished eyes. Then Conchita spoke quickly to him. Her voice was low and tense.
Lisa had stopped struggling. She simply stood there, her head bowed, her shoulders shaking. "Oh Rodney," she sobbed, "I know why you're like this. I know, I know, my darling, but..."
"Shut up!" he said.
He unzipped his fly and took his cock out. It was swollen hard and stiff.
Conchita and the boy both turned to look at him. The boy seemed frightened, but Conchita's mouth fell open and her eyes stared and stared at Rodney's erect tool. Then, breathing heavily, she said, "Come senor, come quick. Come quick before anybody else comes."
Rodney laughed. His cock drooped a little.
"I'm not going to come until after Miguelito does," he said.
With a masturbatory movement he pulled at his cock, then forced it back into his trousers.
"You do the same," he said to Miguelito.
"Si senor."
Obediently, the boy shook the last drops of urine from his long dark uncircumcised prick and Rodney saw that Lisa had looked up for one quick instant to regard it.
He slapped her. He slapped her again. "You little cocksucker," he said.
like an animal after it's been beaten, she began to whimper.
The boy seemed less afraid now and his limp cock began to show its dog-like tip, very red in contrast to the dark brown skin, as, with a jerky movement of his ass, he made it disappear into his trousers.
"No, Rodney, no," Lisa was still whimpering.
He pushed her hard, pushed her hard in front of him, forcing her to follow Conchita and the boy to the back of the dim toilet where the old woman turned a knob in the gray unpainted wall and a door opened.
"Come! Come quick!" she hissed, and beckoned to them with her other hand.
Still pushing Lisa in front of him, Rodney entered the small room behind Conchita and the boy. It was entirely dark. Conchita closed the door, locked it, switched on the light. Miguelito went over to the bed, looked at it uneasily, then went to a corner of the room and stood there gazing at a colored photograph of the famous bullfighter, Lorenzo Garza.
The windowless room was almost entirely filled with a large Victorian bed that was made of brass. On it were some frayed cushions and a dirty lavender spread. Above it, just behind the copper-toned brass poles of the high headboard, was a small image of Jesus on The Cross, the strained ribs of the emaciated body clotted with wax blood.
Miguelito saw this now. He crossed himself. His eyes grew fearful. He began to move in the direction of the door.
"Pretty boy! Pretty boy!"-Conchita tugged at Miguelito's faded shirt-"Don't be a little fool. Don't..."
She looked at Rodney who had thrown Lisa on the bed where, face down, her shoulders shaking, she lay sobbing.
Rodney went over to the door and stood with his back to it. He looked hard at the boy, who was trying to pull himself away from the old woman. The boy glanced at Rodney, glanced away, stopped struggling. Then Rodney took out his wallet and handed him some money. The boy hesitated. He looked at Conchita. She shook her head in assent. "Take it, Miguelito. Take it!" she said.
The boy put his hand out and took the money. He stared at it, at Rodney, at the money again.
"Put it in your pocket, kid," said Rodney, "then get undressed. And you," he said to Conchita, "you get the hell out of here."
"Oh, senor! Please. Please let Conchita stay. Here..."-she hobbled over to the washbasin. She picked up a towel. She picked up another. "Here, Conchita can be nice to all of you. Conchita can..."
"No," said Rodney, "you..." "Senor!"
The old woman got down on her knees in front of him and put her gnarled brown hands to his gray trousers. With contempt, Rodney pushed her away from him.
"Get out, you old sack of shit," he began, but then Conchita wailed, "Oh, senor, senor! I, Conchita, used to be the most beautiful, the best, whore in Mexico. Then my cunt, it got so big that I began to fuck dogs and donkeys for the tourist shows and..."
"I don't want to know the story of your life," said Rodney, "get the hell out of here!"
With an agility that was amazing, the hag stood up and removed her skirt to thrust her old wrinkled belly at him and at the boy, who stood there wide-eyed. "Look!"
She shoved both her hands up into her belly and then her arms also disappeared, almost to her wrists.
"Oh, for Christ's sake," said Rodney, "go out and get yourself a donkey."
"But senor, just think! You and Miguelito, you both have fine big pricks and you both can fuck Conchita, both get in at once!" Excitedly, she shoved her arms in and out of her monstrous cunt. "Yes! And I can spread my legs so wide that..."
"How would you like that, Miguelito?"-Rodney turned to look at the boy and laughed. The boy began to laugh then, too-"How about it, Miguelito?"
The boy looked down. He didn't answer, and again Rodney looked at Conchita who still had her hands buried in her belly. The gruesome sight was working on him oddly. His prick was ramrod stiff. Then he heard Miguelito say, "I will do what you want me to do, senor, but I do not understand the presence of these women. I thought that you would want to be alone with me..."
"What," said Rodney, "gave you that idea?"
Conchita began to laugh in a shrill voice. "Ah, senor," she said, "you see? You see that Miguelito? He's just another little cocksucker, like all the young boys in Mexico City today. They just go around sucking off the tourists for money and letting the tourists suck them. They're no good, these boys. They don't know how to fuck. They're all just little cocksuckers. They're..."
Before she could finish what she was saying, Miguelito pushed his foot in her face and she fell flat.
"That's the boy, Miguelito," Rodney said. "And now listen, you old cunt," he said to Conchita, "we'll let you stay, but there's no fucking in it for you, got that straight?" "Si, senor."
Submissively, the old woman got to her feet. She sighed. She took her blouse off. Now she was entirely naked. Her pendulous old breasts hung almost to her navel. They were wrinkled, like her belly, which sagged above the bushy mound of hair around her cunt.
"God, but you're a loathsome sight!" said Rodney. "Oh well,"-he shrugged-"stay that way. Maybe I'll piss on you later. And as for you,"-he turned to Miguelito-"we'll teach you how to do more than just suck cocks. You see that over there?" He pointed to Lisa who was still lying on the bed, face down, lying there as if she were dead. "You see that bag of bones, Miguelito? Well, you're going to fuck that, Miguelito, and you're going to fuck it right, because if you don't..."
Rodney raised his fist. The boy flinched, then said, "Si, senor. Si, senor. I'll fuck the lady for you. I'll do anything you like, senor. I'll..."
"O.K. kid," said Rodney, "now take your clothes off."
He went over to the bed and sat down next to Lisa. Roughly, he took her by the shoulders. He turned her over.
"No, Rodney," she moaned, "no, Rodney, please, Rodney, no..."
Her eyes were tight shut. Her tear-stained face was still red from the slaps that he had given her. He slapped her again. He said, "Get up and get undressed!"
He turned away from her. He looked at Conchita. He glared at her. He said, "Hey you, get down on your knees! Go on, get down! Get down and take my shoes off!"
The old woman got down on all fours. Her hanging tits grazed the gray stone floor. like a dog, she inched up to Rodney.
"Bark!" he said to her.
She raised her head and gave a grin that twisted her old brown face into a thousand tiny wrinkles. Then, "Ow! Ow!" the sound came forth, "Ow! Ow! Ow!"
"That's enough," said Rodney, "now take off my shoes and take off my socks."
While Conchita did this, he looked at Lisa. She still hadn't stirred. She still lay there, whimpering. Then he looked at Miguelito, who stood in the corner by the washbasin. The boy was stripped to the waist. His ribs, his chest, his shoulders, his arms, were brown, lithe, beautifully proportioned. He held his shirt in his hand. He didn't seem to know what to do with it, or with himself. He just looked at Rodney who looked at him.
"Come here, Miguelito."
The boy approached the bed. He did so with a kind of wariness.
"Don't be afraid," Rodney said and then he said to Conchita, "That's right, now get them off. Quick now. Quick!"
His shoes off and his socks, he pushed the old woman away from him with his bare feet. He stood up. Bending over, he grabbed hold of Lisa and pulled her off the bed.
"If," he said to her, "I have to tell you to get undressed again you'll be goddamned sorry!"
Still whimpering a little, head lowered, Lisa slowly began to undo the buttons of her dress.
"Help her!" Rodney shouted at Conchita.
The old naked hag went up to Lisa, who drew away from her and cried out, "No!"
Conchita cackled and began to paw at Lisa while Rodney shouted, "If you don't let her undress you I'll make you go down on her! How would you like that? Huh?"
"Oh, Rodney!" Lisa screamed.
Rodney bounded off the bed. He pushed Conchita to one side. He pulled off his belt.
"Get back!" he shouted at Conchita and the boy.
They went to stand in the corner by the door.
"Now take your dress off!" Rodney said to Lisa, and as he said this he hit her as hard as he could with his belt, slashing it down across her thighs. He hit her again. He hit her again, and again.
"Yes, Rodney," she said then, meekly, her voice sounding quiet and appeased.
"And let the old bitch help you."
"Yes, Rodney."
Rodney turned to the boy and to Conchita. "Now get back to work," he said to the old woman.
"Si, senor!"-Conchita's face was seamed with a terrible look of satisfaction-Si, senor!" she said, "Si, senor!" and hobbled back to Lisa.
Rodney went over to the bed. He sat down. He took his tie off and his shirt, then, "Come here, kid," he said to Miguelito, "come over here and sit down next to me."
The boy went over to the bed and sat down. There both he and Rodney, stripped to the waist, sat side by side watching the two women.
Conchita had gotten Lisa's dress off. She had seated her in a straight-backed chair. Now the old woman squatted on her haunches, haunches that looked like two pieces of dead meat. Her ass-hole spread. It was as big, as black, as deep, as her cunt. She squatted lower and, deftly, took Lisa's shoes off, then reached up and began to pull at one of her beige stockings. Lisa threw her head back and closed her eyes. Her slender neck and arms were very white against the pinkness of her panties and brassiere. Her soft blonde hair was all disheveled. Red marks showed on her pale face and on her long slim thighs, now bare, as Conchita pulled one stocking off and then the other.
When this was done, Lisa stood up. She looked straight in front of her, avoiding Rodney's eyes and Miguelito's. Conchita stood up, too.
"That's all right, I'll do the rest myself," said Lisa.
"No," said Conchita in a nasty voice, "the senor said that I should do it."
Her enormous breasts flopped against her wrinkled belly as she sidled behind Lisa to undo her brassiere and expose Lisa's small pink-nippled breasts.
"What pretty titties! What pretty pretty titties!" said Conchita as she faced Lisa again and reached with her brown hand for her pink panties.
"That's enough now, that's enough," said Lisa.
She looked imploringly at Rodney, who looked back at her with no expression and said nothing. She looked at Miguelito, whose large brown eyes were fascinated by her breasts, so high and firm and white. She looked at him again, at his strong young hairless chest, his full red lips. She blushed and looked away, but not before she glanced with fear at Rodney, who still looked at her with no expression and said nothing.
Conchita was clawing at her panties.
"Very well," Lisa said.
Instantly, it seemed, her demeanor became different. Angrily, she looked at Rodney and then, with a toss of her head, gazed directly at the boy, her eyes making no concealment of desire.
"Very well," she said again, her voice becoming hard, "take them off. But be sure to keep your tongue in your head, you miserable creature."
With a vicious movement, Conchita pulled Lisa's panties down to her ankles. Then, before she could step out of them, she put her withered arms around Lisa's slim white legs and buried her wrinkled face in the silky young blonde hair of Lisa's cunt.
"Get away from me!" said Lisa, "get away! Get away!"
Wriggling her small hard ass from side to side, her smooth white belly moving with it, she tried to push Conchita from her, but with all her wriggling and her pushing she only succeeded in allowing the old woman to force her face deeper into the lovely crevice that lay between her legs.
"Get away, get away," said Lisa, but more softly and, sinking back onto the chair, she closed her eyes.
Now, like a hungry beast, Conchita shoved Lisa's legs apart, ripping her panties as she did this, and Lisa, with both hands, tore at Conchita's head, pulling at her dyed black hair. But the old woman held on fiercely, forcing her tongue all the way up between the pink wet lips of Lisa's cunt.
"Oh, Rodney!" Lisa cried.
Rodney stood up. He turned to Miguelito. He said, "Come over here with me."
They went over to the chair and stood there watching while Conchita licked and sucked and licked and sucked, her thick grained purple tongue moving in, out, in, out, of Lisa's small pink cunt, in, out, in, out, just like a prick.
Lisa began to moan. She threw her head back. And now, instead of pulling at Conchita's hair, she held Conchita's head with both her hands, held it hard, held it tight, drawing it up close against her belly while she pushed her belly as far forward as she could.
Rodney looked at Miguelito. The boy's wide eyes were darting from Conchita's slurping tongue to Lisa's hard high tits' from Conchita's slurping tongue to Lisa's pale drawn face, and Rodney saw that Miguelito's cock looked as if it were about to rip the cloth of his blue trousers. His own cock was just as hard. Quickly, he unzipped his fly and took it out. Then, moving over to Lisa, he said, "Open your eyes and open your mouth," but she didn't do either and continued to moan.
"O.K." said Rodney, "that's enough!"
He pulled Conchita by the hair, dragging her away from Lisa. Brutally, he kicked her to one side.
"I said," he said, "that there'd be no fucking in it for you. And that means sucking, too."
"Si, senor," gasped the old woman, who had flopped to the floor heavily, her purple tongue, wet and coated with whiteness, hanging limply between her thick creased lips and the broken stumps of her teeth, Si, senor." But as she spoke to Rodney she kept staring fixedly at Lisa's white belly that was still slowly undulating, at the rhythmic beauty of this sight and at the damp blonde hair that fringed Lisa's small pink hole.
His rigid cock sticking out in front of him, sticking out like a sword, Rodney stepped up very close to Lisa now.
"Open your eyes," he said, "and open your mouth, God damn you!"
As he said this, he slapped his burning tool across her face. Instantly, she opened her eyes. She put her hands to his cock and held its hardness hard. Then she moved her delicate lips along the long thick spear and let her small white teeth sink gently into it. First her teeth, then her tongue, caressed its entire length, biting a little and tickling, biting and licking. And then she put the red inflamed tip into her mouth and sucked at it and sucked at it while her innocent gray eyes roved up to the broadness of Rodney's bare chest and from there, still innocent, to Miguelito's, where they rested.
Rodney pulled his cock out of her mouth. He loosened the grip that her fingers had on it. He backed away from her.
"Listen,"-he twisted a strand of her hair and turned her face up to face his-"you're not fooling me a bit. You want that kid to fuck you, don't you?"
"No, Rodney, no." Her eyes were downcast now. Her voice was plaintive. "You know that I only want you."
"Liar!"
He took her by the wrist. He forced her to her feet. His cock pushed against her smooth white skin, making an indentation just below her tits.
"Oh, Rodney," she said, "I love you, I love you. Can't we stop this now, my darling?"
He backed away from her again.
"Oh, Rodney," she said, reaching out her hands to him, "I do love you, I do, I do ... All that I want is to be alone with you, to go to Tehuantepec with you..."
"We'll talk about love, about love and Tehuantepec later," he said, "now take my pants off!" "Yes, dearest."
She got down on her knees, her face brushing against his slightly limp but still tumescent cock. She brushed her face against it harder, making it rise, stiff, to its full length and thickness. While she did this Rodney looked at Miguelito, who still stood there as if he were glued to the spot, except that one of his brown hands was manipulating his trousers at the crotch, where his cock bulged big, looking as if it were about to burst through, pierce, the thin material.
"Hey, cut that out!" said Rodney, "don't be in such a hurry, Miguelito. Don't worry. Your turn is coming. Now you just go over to the bed there and sit down."
"Si, senor."
"And you," he said to Conchita, who still lay sprawled on the floor, now looking at Rodney's stiff cock, "Get up! Get up, and get to work! Tafce the boy's shoes off, the way you did mine..."
"Si, senor."
"No, wait!"
Rodney stepped out of his pants, which Lisa had loosened. He kicked them aside, to where her torn panties lay. He pushed her away from him. He took off his shorts. Then, completely naked, he turned to the old woman who, half-risen, crouched there on her hands and knees, was still gazing at his cock.
"No," he said to her, "you just go over there and sit in the corner until we need you and ... and stop looking at my cock!" He moved closer to her. He took hold of his cock and aimed it at her mouth. She jerked her head up and lunged forward. His cock was almost at her Lips when he pulled it away. "Oh no," he said, "this choice morsel isn't for the-likes of you. Now,"-he gave her a kick-"go over there in the corner and dream about donkeys."
"Si, senor."
Conchita's voice was cracked and whining as she crawled away on all fours to sit herself down in the corner by the washstand and huddle there miserably.
"And now you,"-Rodney bent over and pulled Lisa to her feet-"you, my little darling, you go over there, go over there to the bed, get down on your knees again and take the kid's shoes off." "Yes, Rodney."
She went over to the bed where Miguelito was sitting stiffly and, dropping to her knees before the boy, took his shoes off while Rodney stood over them, watching.
"Now kiss his feet!"
The boy drew back on the bed. His face was flushed with embarrassment. He mumbled, "No, senora, no..."
Rodney took hold of one of his legs and dragged him forward.
"Now sit still," he said, "and let the fine senora kiss your feet. Go ahead now!" he said to Lisa.
Almost avidly, she lifted one of the boy's brown feet to her lips. Her lips were very lovely and so was the boy's foot as she kissed it and kissed it again. She closed her eyes and ran her mouth along his beautiful small toes. She kissed each one of them. Then, opening her eyes, she gazed up at the boy, whose dark handsome face was more red than it was brown. Still holding his foot in her hand, she smiled up at him, smiled a soft, sweet, gentle smile and, taking his other foot in her other hand, she bent her head forward and kissed it.
"Now," said Rodney, with anger that bordered on rage, "take the kid's pants off!"
Lisa stood up and leaned over the boy, who lay there as if he were paralyzed. With a kind of tenderness she leaned very far over him, so that the pink tips of her white tits almost touched the boy's brown face. She put her face close to the boy's. It was very white in contrast to his. Then she whispered, "Don't be frightened, little one, don't..."
Rodney reached for her shoulder and pulled her away. He picked up his belt from the floor.
"I didn't," he said, "give you permission to speak to him! I just said to take off his pants!"
He pulled her to her feet. Her smooth white back and hard white ass and long white legs made his throbbing cock throb more. He raised the belt. He brought it down across her back, slashing as hard as he could. She fell forward, covering the outstretched body of the boy. Then he brought the belt down on her buttocks, making her writhe against the boy's still-covered cock, making her clutch his bare shoulders. Drawing back to slash still harder, he hit her again, then dropped the belt to the floor.
"Now take his pants off!" he said.
She let go of the boy's shoulders. Miguelito's eyes looked terrified. She drew herself up on her knees and began to unbutton his trousers. Rodney went over to the bed and sat down beside them.
"That's right," he said, as he saw the small black crop of hair above the boy's cock come into view, "now pull them down!"
While she did this he looked at the boy's cock. It was limp. There was no sign of its red tip. But it was long and brown and thick. Could it be bigger than his own? Could it be bigger than "the rod?" He felt his cock begin to droop as Lisa got the boy's pants off, revealing all his nakedness. Then he felt his cock descend, go soft, as the boy turned his back on him, turned over and lay prone.
"What do you want me to do, bugger you?" he said, but he said this quietly as he contemplated the boy's young brown ass, so firm, his well-shaped legs, so strong, his smooth broad back, his shoulders.
He looked away to look at Lisa who was standing over them. She, too, had been, still was, gazing at the boy.
"I'll bet you're just dying to ream him, aren't you?" he said, "yes, you'd just love to stick that little sharp pink tongue of yours up that little tight black ass. Now wouldn't you? Wouldn't you, darling?"
She bowed her head as he grabbed her by one of her arms and pulled her down to the bed.
"Well, go ahead," he said, "yes, go ahead."
He backed away from Miguelito. He took her by the neck. He pushed her face against the boy's ass. The boy's body jerked forward. He pinned the blonde head against the brown ass. He held it there hard. He held it there close. Then he said, "Get your tongue up in there! Get it all the way up!"
As she buried her face in Miguelito's ass he loosened his grip on her neck, and as he saw the boy try to move away, then lie still, then begin to squirm, then begin to grind his body on the bed, he felt his own big cock begin to get hard again, become "the rod" again.
Now letting go of Lisa's neck, he watched her ash-blonde head dive forward, watched it push, push, push, against the smooth brown skin. He watched the boy's young body writhe, then moved himself so that he lay next to the boy, lay prone, like the boy. Feeling his cock ram itself into the cover of the bed, he reached for the boy's head and turned it to him. The boy's eyes were closed. He was breathing hard. The nostrils of his Indian nose were quivering.
"Look at me, Miguelito," Rodney said, saying it softly.
Slowly the boy opened his eyes and, timidly, looked at him.
"Feels good, doesn't it?" Rodney said.
The boy blinked his eyes at Rodney. He looked as if he were about to come.
Rodney jumped up. He reached for Lisa's neck and gripped it hard.
"All right," he said, "that's enough. That's enough of that, you little shit eater."
He pulled her off the boy and pushed her away, glancing at her face that was now wet with saliva and no longer white, but pink. Then he took the boy by the shoulders and turned him over. Immense, almost black, its red tip swollen, the boy's hard cock stuck out in front of him. Its red tip had a purple tinge. It looked like the bud of a huge flower that was about to burst into bloom.
"My God!" said Rodney. He stood above the boy and stared down at him. "My God!" he said again, "I think that the kid's cock is bigger than mine!"
"No it isn't, Rodney."
With no warning, Lisa had crawled in front of him, so that, straddling the lower part of the boy's legs, her face was level with Rodney's cock. She took it in her hand. She held it tenderly. She kissed it, and after this she began to run her tongue along the stiff meaty underside of it, wetting every hair that grew there. Coming to his balls, she began to lick them, too. She let go of his cock. She cupped his balls in her hand. Then, with her other hand she grasped his cock again and held it tight while her tongue worked furiously around his balls and behind them, almost reaching the hole of his ass.
Rodney stood there passively and let her do this while continuing to look at the boy who, his eyes still closed, now put out one of his hands to grab hold of his cock.
"No!" said Rodney, "cut that out!"
He pushed Lisa to one side. He leaned forward. He pulled the boy's hand away. He slapped him lightly on the face. "Hold it," he said.
The boy opened his brown eyes and looked up at Rodney, half in fear, half with lust.
"Hold it," Rodney said again, "hold it, Miguelito. You don't have to jerk yourself off. Have you forgotten that you're going to fuck the lady for me?"
"No, senor."
The boy raised himself on his elbows. His cock went down a little. He stared at Lisa, who had taken Rodney's cock in her mouth again and was sucking at it fiercely. The boy stared at her lips, stared at her tongue, stared at her tits, stared at her ass, and as he did this his cock rose again to full length.
"Ow! Ow! Ow!"
Lisa took her mouth from Rodney's cock and she, Rodney and the boy all turned to look at Conchita who, hunched up on all fours, was madly grinning at them while she barked.
"Ow! Ow! Ow!"
His cock nailing the air, Rodney jumped off the bed and went over to Conchita. He kicked her in the ass. He kicked her hard.
"You rotten old bitch," he said, "I didn't tell you to bark again! Now look,"-he took hold of her hair and twisted it-"there's no fucking, there's no sucking, and now there's no watching in it for you, either." He gave her another kick. "Turn around!" he said, "turn around and face the wall and if,"he shook his fist at her-"you make another move or make another sound I'll..."
"Si senor," she whined.
Her huge hanging tits flopping loosely, she turned her flaccid rump to him. She pulled it forward to sit with her veined legs spread out in front of her. Then, with her black head bent and the wrinkled folds of her fat back stretched like small shapeless tits, she sat there facing the wall.
Rodney went back to the bed. His cock was only half-hard now, but he saw that the boy's cock was still fully erect and that Lisa was looking at it while the boy looked at her-at her small firm tits, at her white belly, at the short blonde hair that grew around her cunt.
"And now," Rodney said, "and now you two ardent lovers ... Get off the bed! Come on!"
He pulled at one of Lisa's legs, gave her a hard stiff punch on the cheek of her ass with his other hand, then dragged her off the bed and made her stand next to him. Awkwardly, the boy moved himself forward, his big cock seeming to weigh down the rest of his body. Then, his eyes lowered, his arms hanging loosely, his cock beginning to droop, he stood up to face Rodney and Lisa.
Rodney went to the bed. He sat down on the edge of it.
"Turn around, Miguelito. That's right. Now look at me."
With big scared eyes, the boy looked at Rodney. His cock, too, was only half-hard now, but its bright red tip still protruded a little from the dark brown, almost black, flesh.
"Now," Rodney said, "the senora is going to worship the rod. Then I'll give her permission to suck your cock and we'll see whose cock is bigger. Senora," he said sternly, looking coldly at Lisa, "Senora, you can now begin to worship the rod. And worship it in Spanish, in very clear good Spanish, so that Miguelito will understand."
Rodney moved forward, to the very edge of the bed. He spread his legs. His long cock hung limply between them.
"I said," he said, "that you're to worship the rod. Now begin!"
"Yes, my lord!"
Throwing her head back, and her shoulders, she said this in a clear even voice, with no hint of mockery. For a long moment she stood there in front of him, stood there silently gazing above him, not meeting the steady hard stare that he gave her, not seeming to see him or anything. She stood so straight that she looked taller than she was. She stood there motionless, like a white statue, a marble figure, all white, smooth and white, except for the burning red welts that Rodney's belt had left on her lovely back, on her hard tight ass, on the upper part of her long slim white slim legs.
"Yes, my lord!"
She bowed deeply, so that her hair touched Rodney's bare knees. Then, again, she threw her head back and in the same clear serious voice she intoned, "I love the rod. I adore the rod. I want the rod up my ass. like this..."
She spread her legs. She stuck the middle finger of her right hand between the cheeks of her ass.
"Show the boy," said Rodney.
She turned, so that her ass was almost even with the boy's cock. She manipulated her finger, pushing it in as far as she could, pushing it up, in, until it disappeared. Then she bent forward, so far forward that the boy, staring down at her, could see her finger completely buried in the tight little hole of her ass, could see the smooth white skin around its pink edge, could see the lower part of her cunt, where a rosy wetness lightly moistened the silk-like fringe of soft blonde hair. The boy's cock again rose to its full length and stiffness. Its bursting carmine tip almost touched the pale palm of Lisa's outspread hand.
"Now show me," said Rodney, his voice quiet and commanding.
Bent forward as she was, she turned around, her face hitting against Miguelito's cock.
"Move back, Miguelito!" Rodney said to the boy, whose cock, as if independent of the rest of him, had plunged forward to lie thick and hot against Lisa's cheek, rubbing against her small white half-exposed ear, rubbing, rubbing, into her hair.
His beautiful brown body trembling, the boy muttered something inaudible and a fierce look came into his eyes as, panting like an animal, he stepped back, stepped away, from Lisa.
"There," said Lisa, "there, my lord. There is where I want the rod. There is where I want my beautiful, wonderful, my magnificent rod."
Her ass turned up to Rodney's face, she worked her finger in and out of its exquisitely tight little hole. He spread his legs further apart. His cock was now completely hard. Then, as she jammed her finger up her ass again, he took hold of her wrist and viciously pulled her finger away.
He arose. Still holding her by her wrist, he turned her around, so that she stood facing him. Once more he sat down.
"Not yet," he said, "you can't have the rod up your ass just yet. Now lick the shit off your finger. Go on! Lick it off! And take your eyes away from me. Keep it fixed on the rod."
Staring hard at Rodney's stiff cock, she licked her finger, licked it clean. She dropped her hand to her side. Then, with her other hand, she reached out to touch the hot burning tip of his tool.
"No," he said, "you can't even touch it yet. You must worship it first. Worship it!"
"Yes, my lord!" intently, she stared at his cock. As she did this she raised one of her long slim arms above her head, revealing a soft light fuzz of golden hair in the delicate curve of her armpits. She touched this feathery softness with the fingers of her other hand. Then she made the finger that she had just licked a pointed spear. She made it ramrod stiff and the shine of her nail polish made it resemble a small, erect, pink-tipped prick, a small, erect pink-tipped prick that was fucking her armpit.
"Here, my lord," she said, still staring intently at his cock, "here, my lord, is where I want the great rod." Almost frantically, she moved the finger back and forth in the short silky growth of hair that covered the oval crevice. "And here,"-she dropped her hand and lowered her arm to raise her other arm and begin to make the same fucking movement, frantic, in her other armpit-"yes, my lord, I want the rod here, too. I love the rod! I adore the rod! It's the biggest, most beautiful, rod in the world and I want it everywhere! Inside of me! Outside of me! Everywhere!"
Her mouth was dripping with saliva and her eyes, wide, crazy-wide, still stared at Rodney's cock.
"Wipe your mouth," he said, "wipe it on my feet!"
"Yes, my lord!"
She almost fell to the floor and groveled there as she ran her wet mouth all over his feet, rubbing it hard against them. Then she brushed her mouth up one leg, up the other, and down again, her short straight nose flat on his muscular limbs, her white cheeks caressing the short dark hair that grew there.
"Enough. Enough of that," said Rodney.
He kicked her away from him. She fell back, so that she sat on the floor looking up at his cock and his balls. She lifted one of her hands as if to reach out and touch the round red knob where his long cock ended, but she lowered her hand almost at once and rose to her knees. She inclined her head. She moved an inch or two forward. Her head was now between his legs, which were spread far apart. With an expression of adoration in her eyes, on her lips, she looked up at the hot thick underside of his cock and at his balls that no longer hung but were now firmly held in their tight brown sack of skin.
"I love," Lisa said, "the rod's balls. The rod's balls are the most wonderful balls, the most beautiful balls, in the world, in the universe. They hold all that creamy come I love to drink, love to swallow. Oh, my lord, I beg permission to suck the rod! I beg of you, my lord! Let me suck it!"
Her mouth remained open. She pushed her tongue out of it. It lay over her lower lip, touching her chin. It looked like a come-covered clitoris. She gasped. She panted. Her gray eyes stared up-up, up-pleading with Rodney.
"You're not to look at me," he said, "Look at the rod. Look at it closely."
Quickly, with a shudder of fright, she dropped her eyes. She closed them. She opened them. She closed them and opened them again. Then, half-leaning against one of his legs, she moved her head as near to his cock as she could without touching it. Her eyes were fastened on it.
"Oh," she said, "I want this great rod to bury itself deep in my throat. I want it to choke me! I want it to kill me! Oh, great rod! Great rod!"
She dragged herself away from Rodney and sat facing him again. She threw her shoulders back and tossed her head. Her eyes never left his long, thick, brown, stiff tool.
"Oh, great rod! Great rod!"-Lisa bowed low each time she said this-"Great rod! Great rod!"
Her eyes still concentrated on his cock, she slowly rose to her feet. She stepped back as far as she could. She raised her arms above her head. Then she began to salaam him, bowing very low, her eyes still staring at his cock as if nothing else existed in the world.
"I worship the rod!" she said, "the rod is my God!" she said.
Making deep obeisance, she kept on repeating this in a clear, calm, grave, voice.
"I worship the rod! The rod is my God! I worship the rod! The rod is my God! I worship the rod! The rod is my God...!"
While she intoned these words and bowed humbly before him, Rodney looked at the boy. With enormous eyes, Miguelito was watching her, watching the way her tits would hang like ripe fruit, watching the way that the cheeks of her ass would spread like fruit even riper each time that she bowed before Rodney. The boy's big cock was still hard. It still was stuck out in front of him, as big, as straight, as thick, as stiff, as before. But now, as she continued to say, "I worship the rod! The rod is my God!" he furtively glanced above the bed, at the tortured figure of Jesus. He glanced away. He glanced back again. A look of fear made his dark handsome face even darker. His cock began to go soft. Hurriedly, he crossed himself.
Rodney looked at Lisa. He said, "That's enough. Yes, that's enough now. That will do."
"Yes, my lord," she said, "yes, Rodney..."
She lowered her arms to the sides of her body. She stood there erect, unmoving. Only her eyes moved, moved from his cock to his face.
"I didn't," he said, "tell you that you could stop worshiping. I didn't say that you could look at me or call me by name. Now cast your eyes down, cast it down on the rod, and continue. And say something different for once. Say something different!" "Yes, my lord!"
She moved closer to him. She placed her hands over her cunt, one hand over the other, and now, her eyes fixed on his cock again, she pressed her hands hard, as hard as she could, working them down between her legs until they covered her cunt.
"I want the rod here," she said, "I want it here, hot and burning." Her voice was low, intense. "I want to feel the giant rod, the gigantic stiff rod, in the depths of my belly. I want to feel it tear into me. I want it to cut me, to spear me, to pierce me, to break me in two. I want to feel the hot balls of the rod pressing against the poor little lips of my cunt. I want to hold those hot balls, squeeze them softly, as the rod goes in and out, and then I want to squeeze them harder, but not too hard, when the hot magic juice of the rod squirts forth to bathe me, to saturate me, with delight. I want to put my finger up the ass of my lord, and if I could I would kiss his sweet ass, kiss it and Lick it and suck it while the great rod does its work."
Lisa had moved even closer to Rodney. Her legs were apart now and at least one of her fingers was moving in and out of her cunt, while one finger played with her small pink clitoris. It, Like the nipples of her breasts, stood hard, erect, Like miniature penises.
"And oh," she said, her pale gray eyes still fastened on Rodney's brown cock, "and oh," she said, "if only my lord's tongue, my lord's noble, my lord's knowing tongue, would deign to enter here, would deign to kiss, to spear, to..."
"You're not to worship my tongue," Rodney said, "just worship the rod!"
He stood up. She said, "Yes, my lord," and stared down at his rigid cock, backing away from it so as not to touch it, though her hands had left her cunt and her fingers moved towards it frantically.
"All right," Rodney said, "you can touch it. You can worship it now without words."
Instantly, she was on her knees and her hands were around his cock. They gripped it hard as her tongue roved over its flaming red tip. Then she let go and began to suck it. Her mouth looked just like a smooth shaved cunt. With her arms and hands she embraced his ass, drawing more than half of his cock into her mouth.
Rodney pushed forward, pushed hard, pushing her against the wall as he rammed his cock as far down her throat as he could, pumping it in and out of her pink stretched mouth as she pressed him to her, hard, close, digging her fingernails into the hard firm flesh of his ass. He pushed harder, harder, then, almost coming, he stopped, stopped abruptly, and pulled himself back, pulled his cock, dripping wet with her spit, out of her small hungry mouth that hung wide. Avidly, she lunged forward, trying to get his cock in her mouth again, but, savagely, he tore her hands away from his ass and, as savagely, pushed her away from him. Then once again he stepped back to sit on the edge of the bed where, sweating, breathing heavily, he looked away from her to look at Miguelito and the old woman.
Conchita still sat on the floor by the washstand, slumped forward. Her head hung in front of her, low, like her tits. Her brown wrinkled back and the great hams of her ass were eloquent of wretchedness, misery. She sat there in silence, punished, submissive, uncurious, while just to one side of her Miguelito, who had gotten a hard-on again, was looking from Rodney to Lisa, from Lisa to Rodney, with an excitement that he could scarcely suppress.
Now his right hand grabbed hold of his rearing cock. He pulled at it hard. Then oblivious to Rodney, to Lisa, to everything, he began to jerk himself off.
"Wait, Miguelito!"
Rodney stood up. His own cock was at its full length, as thick and as stiff as it could be when it was hard. He walked over to the boy and placed a hand on his arm, arresting its motion. Then he said, "Let's see whose cock is bigger." He turned to Lisa. "Come over here," he said to her, "and measure them."
Lisa, who still sat on the floor, her back to the wall, now got to her knees and crawled over to where Rodney and Miguelito stood side by side, their two big cocks like two great clubs raised above her head, brutally, threateningly, as if they were about to descend on her, to beat her to death, as she looked up at them, her eyes enormous, her mouth open. She seemed to become dazed now. She simply sat there helplessly, staring from one cock to the other.
"Measure them!" said Rodney.
His voice seemed to startle her. She shook her head from side to side, as if trying to wake herself up, to arouse herself from a dream. She looked at one cock. She looked at the other. She seemed to return to reality. She put out one hand. She put out the other. She took hold of one cock. She took hold of the other.
Miguelito, unable to control himself, began to fuck her hand. As he did this she gripped his cock harder. Rodney looked down at the boy's big brown cock clamped tight in the smallness of Lisa's white fist. Then he, too, began fucking her hand and she, too, gripped his cock harder. She sat there beneath them, squeezing their cocks, squeezing them hard in her tight little fists, the two swollen red tips aimed at her pale face, her cheeks, at her pink mouth, her white teeth, her pink tongue.
Excited though he was, Rodney suddenly stopped grinding his cock back and forth. He drew back, grabbed hold of her wrist and tore her hand loose. Then he reached for her other hand and did the same thing, so that Miguelito's upright cock trembled in the air, trembled by itself, looking like a long dark pole of rubber charged by electricity.
"Measure it!" Rodney shouted at Lisa, pointing to the boy's swollen tool.
Lisa crept forward and stretched her hand from thumb to last finger along the boy's cock, from the little black bush of pubic hair to the big red bulb that tipped it. Her hand only went half-way. As she lifted her hand, marking the spot with a finger of her other hand, the boy lunged forward, his great cock smacking her across one cheek. Rodney took the boy by his arm and pulled him back. He said, "Easy, kid. Take it easy."
The boy tried to pull away from Rodney, but Rodney gripped his arm harder. The boy's eyes were wild, crazed with lust, as Rodney looked at him sternly. Again the boy tried to pull away while, with his other hand, he grabbed hold of his cock and once more began to jerk himself off. Quickly, Rodney got behind Miguelito and took hold of both the boy's arms to hold them behind him. He was now pinned against the boy, except where his cock stood straight and stiff, pointed directly at the boy's hard brown ass.
"Listen," said Rodney, pressing his fingers into the muscles of Miguelito's arms, "I gave you some money to do what I want you to do, not what you want to do. So..."
"Oh," said the boy, his voice low, his voice tight, with desire, "oh senor, please, please. Please put it up my ass. Please, please..."
With a violent shove, the boy pushed his brown buttocks against Rodney's hard cock.
"No," said Rodney, "no, you little fairy, you're not going to get this up your ass."
"No," said Rodney, as the boy writhed against him, "I'm not going to bugger you. No!"
Still pinioning Miguelito to him, he glanced over the boy's smooth brown shoulder, glanced over at Lisa and said, "Hey you, come back here!"
Almost at once she was between them, between their legs, looking up at Rodney's stiff cock, the tip of which touched the boy's ass.
"Now measure mine," he said.
Her ash-blonde hair brushing against the front of Rodney's leg and the rear of Miguelito's, she again put out her hand and stretched it from the hair that grew at the base of Rodney's belly down along his big brown cock towards the tip of it. Then, a joyous note in her voice, she cried out, "Look! Look, Rodney! Look, dearest! Look! Yours is bigger!"
He looked down. Her hand was just short of reaching half way. Triumphantly, he loosened his grip on the boy's shoulders, let go of him, pushed him away, while Lisa still sat there looking up at his cock.
"My rod," she kept murmuring, "my darling, darling rod."
"Now, Miguelito," said Rodney, "go over there to the bed and sit down."
"No, senor! No, senor!"
Before Rodney could stop him, the boy had flung himself forward, had flung himself over Lisa's body and had taken Rodney's cock in his mouth. With his dark hands he held its long lighter brownness and sucked at it with a terrible greed while his traceful young limbs covered Lisa, brownly covered her white back, her white shoulders. Sucking ever harder at Rodney's cock, drawing it deep into his wide fruity mouth, the boy ground his own cock against Lisa, ground it and dug it along her white neck, ground it into her hair.
Rodney pushed at the boy's head, trying to pry him loose from his cock. But the boy kept on sucking, sucking as if he could never stop, not seeming to feel the pressure of Rodney's strong hands. At last Rodney shouted, "Damn you! You're a Goddamned good little cock-sucker, but..."
He took hold of the boy's sleek black hair now and tugged at it. Still the boy held on. Then Rodney shouted. "Lisa! Get hold of his cock! Get hold of his balls! Hurt him! Hurt the little son of a bitch!"
Within two or three seconds Miguelito let go of Rodney's cock, opened his mouth to cry, "No! No! No!" and fell to one side.
Lisa then let go of his balls, which she had been squeezing as hard as she could. Now the boy fell completely away from her, fell to the floor, still crying, "No!" His hands held his balls. His cock had gone soft.
Rodney stared down at him, his own cock only half-hard now. The boy still held his balls in his hands, his eyes still closed with pain.
"You shouldn't," he said to Lisa, "have hurt him so much. Now soothe him, damn you, soothe him!"
He kicked at her, missed, hit Conchita. The old woman turned her head. Her black eyes stared at him fiendishly.
"I'm so sorry," Rodney said with mock courtesy, "I'm so very very sorry. I didn't mean to bring you into this. Now,"-his voice became savage-"turn your face to the wall again," he said, and pushed the sole of his bare foot against her back, digging his heel into the flaccid flesh.
For a split second it looked as if the old hag was going to spit at him, but instead an awful sneer came over her evil dark seamed and wrinkled face as, silently, she turned her head, turned it to the wall again.
"Now," said Rodney to Lisa, "soothe the kid. Do everything that you can to him. You have my permission to suck him, to do anything you like. But get him hard again. Get him hard!"
"Yes, my ... Yes, Rodney," she said.
She still sat on the floor, next to the boy, who still lay there holding his balls. His eyes were still closed. He moaned softly.
A tender expression came over Lisa's pale face. She edged up to the boy and touched his smooth brown forehead with her fingers. Her voice was very weak, almost beneath her breath, as she said, "I'm sorry, little one. I'm sorry that I hurt you, but..."
The boy's eyes fluttered open. Their brownness looked into the greyness of hers. Then he smiled very faintly and as he did this his hands let go of his balls to fall limply away from him, limp, like his long thick brown cock that was entirely brown now, its red tip hidden by the darker brown foreskin that enclosed it.
"But," Lisa said, "I had to hurt you, Miguelito. You were being such a bad boy. Such a bad little boy..."
"Si, senora," the boy whispered, his eyes moving from her eyes to her tits, where the two tiny nipples still stood erect, like two tiny pricks set in ovals of pink flesh.
Solicitously, Lisa took one of her tits in her hand and held it to the boy's ripe-looking lips. Eagerly, he put their redness to its whiteness and as she held her tit to his mouth gently, as gently as if she were giving suck to a babe, she took his head in her other hand and began to caress it as the boy sucked at her tit, sucked at it as he had sucked at Rodney's cock, sucked at it in a frenzied way, as if he were famished.
Rodney stood over them, watching, and as he saw the boy's cock begin to rise again, saw the red tip of it emerge from the long dark hanging foreskin, he felt his own big circumcised cock began to harden.
"That's right, my baby," Lisa crooned, stroking the boy's head, stroking it with passion, seemingly oblivious to Rodney's presence.
Something like jealousy now came over Rodney as he heard her talk so sweetly to the boy and saw the boy's cock become as stiff, as straight, as his own cock now became.
"Does it taste good, my little one? Does it taste good, my baby?"
Softly Lisa spoke to Miguelito, all the while stroking his sleek black hair. Softly she spoke to him, whispering into his ear now. The boy's answer was to push his face even closer to her tit, taking almost all of it into his mouth.
Rodney stepped behind them, then leaned forward, so that his cock was suspended just above them. The boy opened his eyes. He stared. Seeing Rodney's huge thick tool, he took his mouth from Lisa's tit and raised his head towards it.
"Oh no," said Rodney, stepping back again, not looking at Miguelito but looking at Lisa, looking at he'r angrily. "Oh no," he said again, going over to the bed and sitting down, "now get up, you two, you two little cocksuckers. Get off the floor, you two little pigs, and come over here. Miguelito is now going to find out what it feels like to get sucked off by a lady. And then he's going to fuck the lady. He's going to find out what that feels like, too."
Lisa's eyes were tearful as she came to the bed and sat down next to Rodney.
"But you told me to, Rodney," she said, "you told me to..."
She rested a hand on his muscular thigh. She looked at his stiff cock, looked quickly away. She looked up at his face, as if trying to find something there, some sign of the softness, the tenderness, that suffused her own face. With her other hand she touched his chin. As she did this a tear coursed down her cheek. Her delicate lips began to tremble. The prettiness of her pale face became almost beautiful.
"But Rodney," she said, saying it plaintively, "you told me, to, darling. You told me to..."
"Yes," he said, pulling her hand from his chin, removing her other hand from his thigh. "Yes," he said somewhat bitterly, "but I didn't tell you to mother the brat." He pushed her away from him and went to sit at the end of the bed. "Now come here, Miguelito," he said, saying it sharply. "Come here!"
The boy, his cock swinging in front of him, approached the bed. His handsome face and hthe body were panther-like, but his wide brown eyes betrayed him, showing his fear.
"You don't have to be afraid," said Rodney, "just lie down there on the bed. Lie down there next to the lady..."
The boy lay down, but he didn't touch Lisa, who had moved over towards the wall. He just lay there quietly and stared at the ceiling. His big cock, now only half-hard, made a graceful arch above his limber young thighs.
From where he sat at the end of the bed, Rodney contemplated the two figures, reclining there side by side, one so very white, the other so brown, almost black. Lisa was staring at the ceiling, too. Her smooth frail body was tense, its tenseness revealed by a slight trembling of her slim legs. Rodney regarded her lovely blonde cunt, her flat belly, admiring the high little tits, the slender neck, the pretty chin, the half-open lips, the sad eyes. Suddenly he wanted to fuck her, to fuck her tenderly, lovingly. He moved towards her. His legs touched Miguelito's. He glanced at the boy's cock and at the large loose sack of dark brown skin that held the boy's balls. Then he moved to the foot of the bed again, looked at Lisa again and paused, but only for a moment, before he got off the bed and stood by the side of it where, quietly, he gazed down at her and the boy.
"Now, Lisa,"-his voice was somber-"now, Lisa," he said, "go down on the kid..."
Slowly, she moved herself towards the boy, her body half-raised, her unhappy eyes looking at Rodney as if she expected him to change his mind. Her face almost touching the boy's big cock, the tip of which was partly concealed by its foreskin, her large gray eyes still gazed into Rodney's, searchingly. Her lower lip quivered. She looked as if she were about to cry.
Rodney's cock had become partly soft. Now he felt it become very hard. He took hold of it. He looked at her and said, "If you want this up your ass today you'll suck the kid and you'll do a good job, but don't do too good a job because I want him to fuck you." Leaning over her, he took her by the neck and pushed her face against the boy's cock. "And you want him to fuck you, too,"-he jammed her face hard against the boy's rising cock-"now don't you?"
Weeping now, Lisa moved her head horizontally, her cheeks, her nose, her lips, brushing against the long thick stiffening pole. Rodney took his hand away from her neck. "Now get going," he said, "do his balls first."
Her tears wetting Miguelito's brown skin, she took hold of his cock, which was now fully hard, and held it close to one of her cheeks as she buried her face between the boy's legs. She began to lick his balls. The boy writhed on the bed. His lips fell open. He groaned a little. He closed his eyes. His huge cock strained against her white cheek, its red tip swollen and purplish.
"Stop!" said Rodney.
At once, Lisa let go of Miguelito's stiff cock and lifted her face from between his taut legs. Her pale face was wet with tears and saliva. She stared at Rodney bewilderedly. She seemed tired and dazed.
"No, I don't want it that way," Rodney moved forward. He bent over her and smiled. "No," he said, "no, my darling,"-with one finger, he tapped her lightly on her trembling chin-"I've decided to be kind to you. I'm going to let you do sixty-nine with him. Come on now! Hurry up! The kid can't wait forever..."
He gave her a shove and stepped back. Distractedly, but quickly, she turned her body around, so that the blonde hair that fringed her cunt touched the boy's balls again and took his cock in her two hands, holding it tightly.
Miguelito, his ass grinding against the cover of the bed, opened his eyes and held his head forward a little. Seeing her white thighs embracing his face, seeing the pink wet lips of her cunt, he held his head still farther forward and, his eyes staring wildly, pushed his tongue between his red lips, so that the tip of it just touched her tiny clitoris. As he did this, Lisa jumped back. She lifted her head from his balls. Then, jamming her cunt down hard, as hard as she could, she crushed it against the boy's lips. Groaning, she took his cock in her mouth and began to suck at it madly.
Standing above them, Rodney watched the two convulsed figures, watched Miguelito's strong brown arms embrace the roundness of Lisa's white ass, watched her blonde head moving up and down, fast and hard, like a piston. He moved closer, to look at Miguelito's Indian nose half-hidden between the cheeks of her ass. He could see the boy's tongue slithering in, slithering out, of her little pink quivering hole. He could see the boy's straight white teeth nip at her clitoris, nip at it, suck at it, nip at it, suck at it, then could see his tongue slither into her hole again, slither in and out, slither in. Hearing her groan, seeing her head stop moving, Rodney now saw the transparent white liquid caused by her orgasm mix with the wetness of the boy's spit. He looked at the boy's handsome face. It was tortured. But as Lisa's head began to move up again, down again, the smooth grown contours of the boy's face became twisted with passion, with a wild, an almost delirious, rapture. Now Rodney moved forward to look straight at Lisa. Her eyes were closed. Her pale face was flushed. She had half the boy's cock jammed into her mouth and was pumping away at it, pumping hard. With both hands she gripped what still could be seen of his cock. Almost desperately, she seemed to be trying to get all of it into her mouth.
Tighter, tighter, she grasped and squeezed the hot thick stiff brown cock. Harder, harder, she sucked at it. Her face looked anguished. She lifted her ass up and down now, as if she were fucking, as if she, too, had a cock, a big long rearing cock. Rodney sat down on the bed. He put his face close to hers. Then, seeing the boy's legs stiffen and begin to quiver, he grabbed hold of her head and pulled it away from his cock, which she still held on to, held on to tightly.
As his cock left her mouth, the boy cried out and a thick white heavy stream of sperm shot from the flaming red knob. It spurted high, some of it splashing on Lisa's face. She pulled her head back. The jet of white liquid kept pouring out of the boy's rigid cock. It still spurted high. It was still thick and hot. It showered over his legs and his balls. It streamed down his cock to cover her hands. She looked at her hands, at the white creamy come that stuck to them. Then, but with a kind of reluctance, she let go of his cock, which was now going limp, and let it fall between his legs, which were no longer twitching and quivering. The boy just lay there, supine, groaning softly, his white come still dripping from his softening cock, dripping onto one of his legs, its milky whiteness making his dark skin seem darker.
Still hunched over the boy's cock and balls, Lisa looked at her hands that were sticky with come. She held them in front of her, gingerly.
"Look what you've done, you dumb bitch," Rodney said. "Now how in the hell do you expect him to fuck you?"
"I..." she began.
"Oh shut up!" said Rodney, "and lick that stuff off your hands!"
Lisa looked at her hands again. The sticky come was thickening now, becoming pasty.
"I..." she began again.
"You!" Rodney said, and reached for her wrists. "Oh, Rodney!" she cried.
As she said this he twisted her wrists as hard as he could and then pushed her hands to her face, where the boy's sperm and her tears and the spit that still drooled from her mouth had already made the paleness of her pretty face all smeared and streaked. Now Rodney held her small fragile hands against her pink mouth, against her straight nose. He seemed to be smothering her.
"Go on!" he said, "Lick that stuff off your hands!" and, saying this, he let go of them.
Slowly, tears making tracks through the caked come on her face, she licked the oozing white sperm that still lay on her hands, thick and white.
"Lick it all off!" said Rodney.
Faster, she licked her fingers and the back of each hand, all the way down to the red marks that circled her delicate wrists.
"Now," said Rodney, more quietly, "Lick the come off his cock and his balls and his legs. Make sure that none of it's left. And do a good job. The kid's only sixteen. He'll probably be able to get a hard-on again..."
He shoved her face forward. It touched the boy's soft wet cock. Then he stepped back to stand by the side of the bed, his own cock hard and hot and dry, except for where the lymph-like moisture of excitement dampened the burning red tip.
The boy lay there indolently, his arms stretched out, his well-knit brown body completely relaxed, his handsome face turned to the wall. But now, as Lisa began to lick his cock and his balls and his legs, he turned his face towards Rodney and opened his eyes. Seeing Rodney's rearing cock, he opened his mouth, and then, as Lisa lifted herself to get between his legs and bury her face in his balls, his limp cock began to slowly rise again, slowly rise from where it lay across the blondeness of her head, slowly, slowly rise until it stood erect, like a sharp stiff blood-tipped sword that had pierced her skull and now was surrounded by her tousled hair.
Rodney moved closer to the bed. The boy put out his hand, trying to touch Rodney, trying to touch his big prick. The boy was breathing heavily, and now Rodney was, too, as he pushed the boy's hand away and got up on the bed to arch his strong hard body above Lisa's.
Lifting her head from the boy's balls, he held it for a moment. He almost stroked her hair. Then he whispered, "Now mount the kid."
Immediately, with something like alacrity, she took hold of the boy's stiff cock and, still holding on to it, holding on to it hard, she lifted her ass as Rodney lifted his hands from her head. Her ass touched Rodney's face. He stared at it. He stared at the two smooth melons of marble-like flesh. He placed his hands on the hard firm cheeks to separate them, spreading them wide so that he could see the tiny pink hole, so tight, like a rosebud. Flattening his hands against her ass, he now spread it as wide as he could and looked up, up, into the narrow dark crevice. Then he stuck out his tongue and pushed the tip of it into the opening. He pushed harder. Lisa shuddered. A kind of spasm went through her.
He drew away. Looking down, he could see her blonde cunt lowering itself towards the turgid knob of Miguelito's cock. He could see her grip the thick sheath lower, just above the boy's balls, and then, with a sudden movement that pushed his hands from her ass, he saw the huge cock enter her cunt, spreading its wet lips wide. He moved back, so that his head was pinned just below her grinding ass, and as he lay there he could see the boy's cock ramming up into her as she took her hand from the thick brown heavy root of it. Now he could hear the boy's tense breathing. Now he could see the boy's brown fingers move around Lisa's white shoulders, digging into the smooth soft tender skin, digging into it hard. And now he could hear Lisa panting. He could hear her sighing and spitting. And now, as Miguelito's cock disappeared and she fell forward to cover the boy, her white legs spreading out over his, he could hear her say in a frenzied voice, "Oh, fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!"
All that Rodney now could see was her white ass and the boy's brown balls crushed beneath her cunt and his cock. His own cock aflame, he got to his knees and, seizing the cheeks of her ass as they ground up and down, he arrested the movement of her legs and her thighs. Her whole body shook. Her whole body trembled. Then, straddling her, pulling her ass up to him, pulling it close, so that the boy's cock came half out of her cunt, he rammed his cock into the narrow crevice, drove its burning tip into the tight little hole.
Deeper, deeper, he drove his cock in, gripping her arms just below her thin shoulders, where Miguelito still held on to her, digging his fingernails into her flesh. Now his cock was halfway up her ass and the boy's cock was halfway up her belly. He could feel the tight hot mucous artery contract around his tumid prick. Digging deeper, he could feel the boy's cock digging deeper, too.
"Oh, fuck me! Bugger me! Fuck me! Bugger me!"
Pinned between them, Lisa cried out in pain. Her face, now very close to the boy's, was drawn, was drenched with tears. She drew in her lips, her delicate but slobbering lips. She sucked in her breath with wild ecstasy. Her gray eyes seemed about to burst from their sockets. She began to spit on Miguelito's brown face, its youth and beauty furious with lust and pleasure.
Mad with the feel of his cock up her ass, mad with the sound of her screams, Rodney drove his cock all the way in, all the way up. He could feel its hard hotness burrowing into the softer hotness of her shit, and he could feel the boy's cock, the whole hard stiff length of it, on the other side of his own, could feel it grinding up into her, stabbing her, spearing her, with a cruelty that was relentless.
Hearing no further sound from Lisa, Rodney lay still. She lay still, too. Had she fainted? He lay very quietly, his body spread out over hers and the boy's, his large heavy balls jammed tight against her small distended ass. The only movement now was made by the boy, who continued to ram his cock into her with a strength that pushed Lisa's body up, and his own. He could feel the boy's cock pushing deep. It felt as if it were touching his own.
Afraid to move, afraid that if he did so she would break in two, Rodney lay there, prone and felt his cock slowly go soft in the softness of her shit. He lay there listening to her low spasmodic breathing and to the brutal grunts made by the boy. Then he heard the boy cry out something in a muffled voice and with a final plunge of his enormous cock push him and Lisa upward. He could hear her moan now. So she hadn't fainted ... And as the boy's sperm shot into her he could feel her body writhe, convulsed, between his and the boy's. And now he felt the boy's prick go soft and his own big prick become hard again.
For another minute or more Rodney lay there without moving. Then he saw the boy's hands drop away from her shoulders and felt the boy's prick go very soft, until it was no more than a rubbery tube on the other side of his steel-like tool. Feeling this, feeling Lisa move her ass, hearing her murmur, "Now bugger me, darling, bugger me," he drew himself back to draw his big randy tool halfway out of her ass, now gyrating.
"Lie still!" he said.
Her ass stopped moving. He arched himself over her and the boy. He drew his cock out of her ass until only its tip was concealed. He looked down at the long dark tool that speared the tender white flesh. Then he looked up, at her blonde head that was touching the boy's. Still arched there, tense, he leaned forward to see that the boy was kissing her full on the mouth and that she was returning his kiss. Viciously, he grabbed hold of her hair to pull her lips and her tongue from the boy's. He gripped her by the shoulders as if he could kill her, clawing her with the nails of his fingers. Then, cursing, he drove his big cock up her small ass as hard as he could and, taking his hands from her shoulders, got hold of the boy's ass to raise both Lisa's body and the boy's jamming them hard, pressing them tight, against his own.
Now Rodney rode her. Maniacally, he pumped his cock in and out, pushing, shoving, grinding, but as he felt his sperm begin to move from his balls, felt the squirting sensation at the base of his cock, he stopped moving, stopped himself short, and, sweating, lay there to look up at the brass poles of the bed, at the clotted wax blood on the image of Christ.
"Now! Now!" he cried. "Now worship the rod!"
"Oh," said Lisa, her voice tight," her voice choked, "oh, oh..."
"You little bitch fucker!" Rodney yelled now, "I said worship it! Worship it! Worship it!"
"I love the rod," Lisa managed to say as he dug his cock into her bowels, dug it deep.
"Love it!" cried Rodney.
"The rod is my God," she now breathed as he jabbed his cock deeper and the hot wet sperm shot out of it.
Hot, the thick sperm spurted out of him, and his eyes closed, his legs stiff, he felt all the strong sweetness, the pain, of a maddening orgasm. He felt it in his legs, in his thighs. He felt it hit the base of his spine and travel on up to his head, to his eyes, where it now seemed as if his sperm was pouring out to bathe his eyeballs, blinding him. Weakly, he raised his head, then lowered it to once more feel the hot thick liquid jet of sperm stream out of his trembling cock, wetting, soaking, the innermost depths of her bowels. Another tremor went through him. Then he lay there as if he were dead.
"Rodney, my darling. Rodney, my dearest. Rodney, my..."
Lisa's voice seemed far, so far, away as he lay there prone and felt the sweat cooling on his hot body. His head turned towards the wall, he lay there with his cheek pressed close to her hair. He lay there heavily. Then, feeling her body move beneath his, he opened his eyes and saw that the boy was pushing at her and that both he and Lisa were gasping. He lifted his head from her head and his chest from her back. He turned his head the other way. His eyes met Conchita's.
The old woman still sat in the corner, but she had turned around and, both her hands jabbed deep in her cunt, was masturbating while watching them. Her pendulous breasts flopped heavily against her hideous belly. Her eyes stared vacantly. Her mouth hung open. She grunted. She wheezed.
"I..." began Rodney, but then he shrugged and he laughed. Slowly, he got to his knees. Slowly, he pulled his long limp cock, now browner than ever, out of Lisa's white ass.
Looking down at his cock, then at Lisa, who had fallen to one side of the boy, looking at the boy who, like Lisa, lay there supine, exhausted, he turned to Conchita and said, "All right, old girl, that's enough now." His voice was gruff but not severe. "All right," he said as she pulled her hands out of her huge black cunt, "now bring us some soap and hot water..."
At first Conchita glared at him fiercely, but then, seeing how his manner had changed, she lifted herself on her haunches and quietly said, "Si, senor, but..."
"But what?"
"I have no hot water..."
"All right, bring us some soap and cold water and," he added, "some towels." "Si, senor."
While the old woman filled a tin bucket with water, Rodney stood up on the bed, stood at the foot of it. He looked down at his prick. It hung long and limp. A thin string of sperm oozed from the still-swollen tip of it. Pulling at this, then touching his cock to feel her shit on the palm of his hand, he looked down at Lisa and at the boy. They still lay there quietly, side by side. Lisa was gazing up at him, trying to smile, and the boy was gazing at Lisa with wonder in his big eyes. He had one hand on his long brown cock and was pressing down on it hard.
"Haven't you had enough, kid?" said Rodney.
As he said this the boy looked up at him. He looked at his cock. He began to stare at it.
"Now listen, kid," said Rodney, "the show's all over. So be a good boy now. Get up, go over there, wash yourself and get dressed. And then I think you'd better go..."
"Oh no, senor!" he said again, saying it pitifully, The boy leaped up and, almost stepping on Lisa, came over to stand facing Rodney. Tears filled his beautiful eyes. His lithe brown body began to tremble.
"Oh, no, senor!" he said again, saying it pitifully, "I don't want to go. I don't ever want to leave you. I love you and I love the beautiful lady." He took hold of one of Rodney's arms and with his other hand he reached for Rodney's prick. "Please senor,"-his voice broke-"please, senor. Please, senor."
Hard, but not too hard, Rodney pushed the boy away from him. Then he said, "Now listen, Miguelito. Listen, kid. Do as I say or..."
With an indistinguishable oath, the boy turned away from Rodney and flung himself upon the bed, face down. Then, as quickly, he arose, only to throw himself down again, this time at Lisa's feet, which he took in his hands, both at once, and began to kiss, kiss frenziedly.
"Oh, Rodney," Lisa said. Her voice was faint, was weak. "Oh, Rodney," she said, her gray eyes gazing up at him, then at the boy's head pityingly. "Oh, Rodney," she said, "please ... please do something."
Rodney looked down at the boy whose strong brown hands were now caressing Lisa's shm white legs. "Miguelito!" he said.
The boy didn't seem to hear him as, now, he buried his head between Lisa's thighs, so that his sleek black hair concealed the soft tuft of dark blonde hair that fringed her cunt. "Miguelito!"
Rodney leaned forward. He was about to pull the boy away from Lisa, whose body had begun to writhe, whose eyes were closed again. Then he turned, for Conchita, who had placed the bucket down beside the bed, now shouted at the boy in a high shrill threatening voice, saying something rapidly, so rapidly that Rodney could not understand.
The boy's head stopped diving, diving up, down, up, down, between Lisa's trembling thighs. His sleek dark head lay still against the whiteness of her undulating belly. Now, from among the flow of words that streamed from Conchita's cracked lips, Rodney could distinguish the word, "Sinner!", then "Hellfire!", "Jesus!" and "Damnation!"
The boy lifted his head from Lisa's thighs and belly. As Conchita continued to shout at him he got to his knees. Now, instead of looking down at Lisa, he looked up at the figure of Christ on The Cross. His huge dark prick went soft, as if it had been dipped in freezing water, its long foreskin wrapping itself around, enclosing, the big bulbous tip.
Conchita, more quietly now, continued to rail at the boy who, as he listened to her, never took his eyes from the image of Jesus. Slowly, he stood up and crossed himself, a terrified expression in his enormous brown eyes. Then he bounded off the bed, almost knocking over the old naked hag, who still ranted at him, flailing her arms.
"All right, Conchita. Very good. That's enough now," said Rodney.
"Si, senor."
"And seeing as how you've turned so holy and righteous," he said, "I think that you'd better get dressed now, too, and leave the senora and me to ourselves. Just..."
"But don't you want me to wash you, senor? You and the senora...?"
The old woman's smile was an evil leer. The stumps of her teeth looked almost as brown as the rest of her, and as diseased. She put out one hand that she held a bar of green soap in. In her other hand she held two dingy towels. "No," said Rodney.
"But," said Conchita, looking directly at his cock, her tongue licking her lips as she did this, "the senor doesn't want to handle his magnificent prick in its present condition, now does he?"
"Oh, you old hypocrite," Rodney laughed, "I'm almost inclined to let you lick the shit off it. You'd like that, now wouldn't you?"
"Si senor."
"I knew that you would," said Rodney, "but I don't want my cock to get any dirtier than it already is. So,"-his voice had a snarl in it now"put the soap and towels down by the basin, and do what Miguelito's doing. Get dressed!"
As he said this Rodney got off the bed and looked at the boy, who had his shirt on, and his trousers. He was now pushing one of his bare feet into one of his old laceless shoes and, as Rodney came up to him, he lowered his head lower than it already was and, hastily, almost frantically pushed his other foot into the other old shoe.
"Here," said Rodney picking up his trousers and putting his hand into one of the pockets, "here, Miguelito," he said, "I want you take a little more money..."
Biting his lower hp, his eyes fastened on his broken shoes, the boy shook his head. He said nothing. He just shook his head from side to side, shook it so hard that his shining black hair flew to fall across his smooth brown forehead. "Fool!" cried Conchita.
Arms akimbo, the old woman stood there and stared at the boy. With surprising quickness, she had put on her skirt and her blouse and her old bedroom shppers. Now she reached for her shawl, which hung on a hook near the door.
"Fool!" she cried again.
"You'll take it, won't you?" said Rodney. "Here, you can have it, you old cow," he said, and handed her a ten peso note.
"Ah, gracias, senor!" Conchita grabbed the money and stuffed it into her now-shapeless bosom. "Gracias! Muchas gracias! Muchas gracias, senor!"
"Now get the hell out of here," said Rodney.
"Si, senor."
When the door closed behind Conchita, Rodney looked at the boy again. He hadn't moved. He still stood there shaking his head. Then Rodney looked at Lisa, who was still lying on the bed, her face turned towards the wall.
."Lisa," he said, saying it quietly, "Lisa, Lisa..."
As quietly as he spoke her name, she turned over to look at him, at the boy, at him again.
"Make the kid take some more money from me," Rodney said.
Her lips trembling, her pale face drawn, almost haggard, Lisa looked at the boy, looked at him tenderly, and then softly said, "Miguelito..."
The boy looked up at her, looked down again.
"Miguelito," she repeated, "Miguelito ... Miguelito ... Be a good boy now. Go on, take it, mon petit. Take what the senor would like to give you..."
"No, senor!"
The boy raised his head now, raised it so violently that his hair flew back from his forehead. His full red sensual lips were quivering. Once more he shook his head, shook it hard. Then he looked at Rodney, looked at Lisa, looked at Jesus on The Cross and crossed himself.
"Miguelito..." said Lisa again, her voice breaking.
"No, senora." The boy put his hand in the pocket of his faded blue pants and took out some money. "No, senor." He looked straight at Rodney, but with no insolence. "Here, senor,"-his voice was almost apologetic-"here, senor, I cannot take this money that I took before. I..."
"Oh, don't be silly," said Rodney, "put it back in your pocket, kid. You can use it. And..."
"No, senor. I am a terrible sinner, senor. He forced the money into Rodney's hand. "Here, take it, senor. And now I must go. I must go and see the priest. I must..."
Glancing swiftly at Lisa, desire came into his eyes for an instant. Then, as swiftly, he glanced at Rodney's long hanging cock.
"No!" the boy cried and, before Rodney could stop him, he ran from the room. The door banged behind him.
"Well!" said Rodney, turning to the bed, but not looking at Lisa, "well!" A kind of amusement colored his exclamation. "I think that we've ended his career as a cocksucker. That is, you have."
"Oh, Rodney, how can you..."
He looked at her now. She lay flat on her back She was weeping as she stared at the ceiling. He approached the bed. He stood there hesitantly. Then he sat down on the edge of it.
"What do you mean?" he now said, saying it quietly but firmly, with just a hint of anger in his voice.
"Oh, Rodney," she sobbed, "don't you see what we've done? That poor boy ... He'll never be the same again and..."
"Of course not," said Rodney, "you've given him a taste for cunt."
He put out his hand and touched her cunt. She pulled away from him. She turned her face, then her body, to the wall. She began to sob uncontrollably.
Seeing her body so shaken with sobs, seeing the red welts that his belt had left on its whiteness, he began to feel his cock harden again. He stood up. He picked up his belt. He raised it above his head and was about to slash her with it when he heard her say, "Oh, Rodney, I understand. I really do. You're so very unhappy, my darling. It's because of that that you do these terrible things..."
He dropped the belt. He went to the bed again. He sat down again. He touched her on the shoulder. He touched her gently.
"And you?" he said.
She turned her head. She looked up at him. Her tear-streaked face, with some of Miguelito's sperm still sticking to it, was haggard with unhappiness. He felt his cock rise.
"Oh, Rodney," she said, "I know that I'm to blame as much as you. But we'll never do anything like this again, now will we? In Tehuantepec we'll..."
Find other Miguelitos? he thought. No, the women in Tehuantepec, the girls were said to be the most beautiful in Mexico...
"We'll," he interrupted her, "give you a taste for cunt as well as cock when we get down there in Tehuantepec. Oh, boy!" he said, and laughed, "we're going to go down on Tehuantepec. Yes, yes, yes! We're going to go down on every little cunt that we can lay our hands on there..."
"Rodney!"
"Oh what the hell,"-he pushed, he shoved, her away from him-"are you being so sweet and pure, so virginal, about? You know God damn well that you like me to bugger you, that you like me to beat you, that..."
"Yes,"-she bit her lips-"yes," she said, her voice completely choked, "yes, Rodney, but..."
"You don't like to talk about it, do you?" He got off the bed again and stood there looking down at her. His cock was completely erect. He saw that she was looking at it. "Don't tell me," he said, "that you didn't like doing every little thing you did today. Don't..."
"I've never," she exclaimed now, "done anything like this before! I..."
"Oh, shut up!" he said, and picked up his belt again.
His cock stuck straight out in front of him as he swung his arm behind his back to raise the belt above his head.
"Rodney!"
She had turned over to he on her stomach and had crept towards the edge of the bed. Her eyes were fixed on his cock as, now, he slashed the belt down on her back, then brought it up again to slash it down on her squirming white ass.
"Oh, Rodney!"
Her hands reached out to touch the tip of his cock. He pushed them away. Brutally, he turned her body over. He stepped back again and raised the belt above his head. Then, bringing it down with full force on her belly, he hit her there as hard as he could, hit her again, and, with the next blow, slashed at her breasts.
"Rodney," she moaned, her fingers digging into the soiled rumpled bedspread, and as she writhed there, her mouth drooling saliva, her eyes streaming tears, He hit her once more, this time lashing her across her thighs and her cunt.
"There," he said, letting the belt fall to the floor, "that'll teach you to he to me..."
"But I've never lied to you, Rodney. I couldn't lie to you, Rodney. Not to you, my darling..."
"Balls!"
He jumped up on the bed and stood over her. His big cock was suspended above her, rigid. It was a stiff brown pole. She gazed up at it and then, raising herself to a sitting position, she took it in her two hands. The tears still flowing down her cheeks, she held it against one cheek, held it against the other, the remains of her own brown excrement mingling with her tears and what was left of Miguelito's sperm.
Staring down at her, Rodney said, "What do you want now? So you do want to lick your own shit off my cock. You were just teasing me last time when you refused, now weren't you?"
"Anything ... Anything you like, Rodney. Anything you want," she said and put her tongue out to lick his cock's burning red knob."
"Taste good?" he said, sneering.
"Oh, Rodney..."
She let go of his cock. She dropped her arms. They fell to hang limply beside her. Then her whole body seemed to crumple at his feet and she fell forward, her head between his legs, to he there sobbing until he thought that she would never be able to get up again, never be able to do anything but he there like that.
"Lisa..." he said, with faint alarm, "Lisa ... Lisa..."
Leaning over, he lifted her gently and lay her on her back. She was sobbing hysterically, and now he saw that the welts on her belly, her breasts and her thighs were bleeding a little. Not much, But enough to ... Worry him? Yes.
He got off the bed and went to the washstand where he dipped a towel in the full bucket of water that Conchita had placed beneath it. Then, his cock no longer hard, he went back to the bed and began to bathe her face and, while she sobbed, wiped it clean.
As, now, he put the towel to her breasts and her belly, her sobbing ceased and, opening her eyes, she looked at him with a faraway smile, looked at him and said, "You're so good to me, Rodney. So. good ... So good..."
Lying to one side of her, he was now massaging her thighs and her cunt very gently with the damp towel. She put her hand to his wrist. He stopped and looked at her. Tears filled her eyes again and, again, her lips began to tremble as she tried to make her smile broader.
"Darling," she said, "I should be doing this for you..."
Sitting up, she took the towel from him and put it to his long brown cock, which lay between his legs, inert. He leaned back to he there, supine, and as she wiped it and wiped it and looked at it and looked at it, his cock began to rise again, rise slowly.
"Oh, my rod, my beautiful rod..." Lisa murmured.
She put it to her lips. She put it in her mouth. She held it there, sucking it until it was entirely hard. Then, as he leaned his head forward to look at her, she took his cock out of her mouth to look at it and kiss it. Tenderly, she caressed it with the fingers of one hand as, with the fingers of her other hand, she gently fondled his heavy brown balls, then cupped them in the smooth warm palm of her hand.
"Lisa..." he whispered. "Yes, my darling?"
At once she was lying next to him, the fingers of one fragile hand still caressing his hot throbbing tool. He took her fingers away from it. He moved himself to he on top of her. Then, raising his ass and spreading her legs, he rammed his tool into her, into her cunt, rammed it as hard as he could into the depths of her belly.
Slowly at first he fucked her, fucked her quietly, soundlessly, almost with calmness, but as the wet lips of her cunt closed around the cylindrical thickness of his hot prick, closed around and let go, pinching and squeezing the hot wet skin, he jammed her body closer to his, until their bodies were like one body lying there.
"Rodney, my darling. Rodney, Rodney..."
"Sh-h-h..." he said and worked the muscles of his cock so that, without moving it, it pulsed against her throbbing womb, pulsed there like a heartbeat.
"Oh-h-h..." she said.
The only movement between them now was within her, where his unmoving prick throbbed in the tight clutch of her cunt. He closed his eyes. He seemed to see his prick buried within her and for at least a minute he lay there like that on top of her. Then, slowly, he raised his ass to pull about an inch of his cock out of her wet clutching cunt.
Saying nothing, he pulled his cock out a bit more, then grabbed hold of her shoulders and, shoving her lower, so that his head was all the way above hers, he began to fuck her, to fuck her hard now, and fast.
Hard, fast, he fucked her, ramming his cock in and out of her, while with the whole length of her tongue she licked his chest, licked the small growth of hair on it, licked his hard nipples. Getting hold of his balls, she held them, held them first, held them hard, while his stiff cock moved in and out of her, moved hard and fast. Her other hand she placed on his ass, sticking one of her fingers into his ass-hole, but he just held on to her shoulders, pushing down on them, pushing down on them as if they were clay, as he fucked her, fucked her hard, fucked her fast.
Now feeling as if he were about to come, he stopped, stopped abruptly, and, pulling her finger out of his ass-hole, taking her hand from his balls, he grabbed hold of her legs and threw them back over her head so that her head was pinned between them. For an instant he looked into her eyes, straight into their gray wide rapture. Then he looked down so that he could see the brown root of his cock, so that he could see the blonde edge of her cunt, so that he could see her pink clitoris and her tight ass-hole.
Raising herself on her elbows, she looked grotesque with her legs pinned above her as she tried to see, too. Rodney leaned back a little. Then, very slowly, he let go of her legs, so that, now, they both leaned on their elbows, both could see his cock and her cunt. Carefully, so as not to slip out of her, he began to fuck her again. As carefully, she responded to each of his movements. Carefully, slowly, they kept at it, kept at it, their eyes never leaving the sacred spot. Carefully, slowly, they fucked in this way until, at last, they were both lying prone, hardly touching each other, except where his big cock was still halfway in her small cunt.
"Oh, Rodney!"
As she said this, she raised herself to her elbows again, then, carefully, so as not to let him slip out of her, got herself into a sitting position. She was astride him now, her hands gripping his shoulders, her round little tits dangling above him like succulent pears. Mounting him all the way, she jammed her knees into his thighs. Then she began to ride him, ride him with fury.
His fingernails digging into the soft sore flesh of her ass, he looked up at her, up at her face, its paleness now flushed, up at her eyes that stared at him wildly, up at her mouth that hung open, its delicate lips dribbling with spit. He looked at her slender white neck, at her tits and her belly, their whiteness reddened by the ugly welts that seemed now to spread as, riding him, riding him, riding him madly, her spit began to fall on his face.
"Oh, you cocksucker, you wonderful cocksucker. You're my own little cocksucker," Rodney said and, taking his hands from her ass, he reached for her shoulders.
She continued to ride him, her cunt grinding onto his big rearing cock which, as he looked at it, looked like a corkscrew, a...
"I'll screw you, I'll screw you. Now I'll screw you," he said, and throwing her back but managing to keep his cock in her cunt, he reversed their positions and mounted her.
"I'll fuck you, I'll fuck you, I'll fuck you," he said as he plowed his cock into her, plowed, jammed, rammed, his cock into her good, good and hard.
"Yes, fuck me, on fuck me, oh fuck me," she said.
His cock now all the way in her, he pulled her legs under his. Their bodies were now pressed tightly together, his head just above hers. He could feel his balls being squeezed by the grinding cheeks of her ass. Then...
"I'm coming," he groaned.
"Come, darling, come," he could hear her say and...
...he shot his sperm into her.
Now, as his sperm poured out of him, he could felt her cunt clutch at his softening prick and then, as it relaxed its hold, he could hear her moan softly as she came, too.
Quiescent, they lay there like that, his head still above hers, his unshaven chin resting in the cool softness of her blonde hair. Then, feeling rested, at ease, he pulled slowly away from her.
Slowly, his long brown cock, soft now and coated with the white of her come, fell out of her cunt. As he watched this she took his head between her two hands. She put her mouth to his lips.
"I love you, I love you, I love you," she said.
He let her kiss him, let her stick her tongue between his teeth, darting it into his mouth. With a kind of resignation, wearily, he pushed his tongue against hers. Then he pulled away and, "I think," he said, "that we'd better get dressed."
She looked at him with mild reproach. "So," she said, "you want to get rid of me already..."
He shook his head. She smiled. She patted him on the cheek. Then she said, "Yes, you're right, darling. It must be late and..."
She drew in her breath. Her eyes seemed to go greyer. She must be thinking of Luis...
Quickly, more quickly than he, she washed herself and dressed, and as he was tying his tie he saw her put her torn panties into her large leather handbag.
They had dressed in silence. Now he said, "You'd better not let Luis see you without any clothes on. Not for awhile, anyway. Not until those marks go from..."
"Oh, Rodney," she said, "you know ... you know that since I have known you I haven't let Luis touch me, see me..."
"Yes, I know," he said, and put his hand on the knob of the door.
"Wait," she said.
He looked at her. Her gray eyes were almost blue, but her pink lips were pouting. "What is it?"
"What is it?" he asked again.
"I..." she began, then she stared down at the floor and she said, "You said that I shouldn't let Luis see me naked for awhile. Does that mean that you expect me to stay there for awhile, that we're not ... that we're not going to Tehuantepec?"
Again he looked at her. Fully dressed, she re-became an object of desire to him. Tears welled in her eyes. Her lips were trembling. Astonished, he felt his cock becoming hard again. The little bitch ... She really did something to him. She really did. So...
"No, no, Lisa, we're going..." He took his hand from the doorknob and touched her wrist. "Yes, yes, Lisa, we're going ... We're going to Tehuantepec. We're..."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure."
She threw her arms around him, pressing her thighs close to his, pushing her cunt up against his cock. It was a miracle, he thought, but he was hard again...
At last he pulled himself away from her. Then, opening the door, he said, "Come on, let's go." "Is anyone there?" she said, her voice becoming tremulous.
"No," he said and took her hand to lead her past the urinals and out into the small tiled airless space where Conchita sat under the dim yellow light, as composed, as calm, as before. Again she was knitting, quietly knitting, and when she saw them she half rose from her chair.
"Ah," she said, "you will soon visit Conchita again, won't you, senor? And you, my fine lady?
Disdainfully, Lisa looked straight in front of her, but Rodney said, "Sure, Conchita, we'll be seeing you soon."
"Very good, senor. Very good. Very good. Remember, you are always welcome in Conchita's house. Conchita's house is yours..."
Pulling him by the hand, pulling him hard, Lisa led him into the cafe where he, seeing an empty table near the door, pulled his hand from hers and said, "Let's go over to that table and sit down."
"But..."
"Oh, only for a moment," he said, "I know that you have to go..."
They went to the table. They sat down. She looked at him and said, "You're sure? You're really sure?"
"I'm sure. I'm really sure," he said and, looking up at the waitress, at the way her big tits pressed against the black cotton of her blouse, he smiled and, lighting a cigarette, he said, "I don't know. I don't know what I want..."
He crossed his legs. He looked at the waitress again. "Oh well," he said, "bring me a beer. No. No, the lady is leaving."
"Si, senor. Carta Blanca, senor?"
"No, senorita, make it a Bohemia..."
"Very good, senor," the waitress said and walked away, Rodney's eyes following the supple movement of her ass.
"I don't think I'll go," said Lisa, laughing, but laughing nervously, "oh, you're terrible, Rodney, you really are." She lay her hand on his. "But I love you, my darling. I do. I really do."
"You do?"
"I do."
"Well, then don't you think you'd better..."
"Yes,"-she sucked in her breath-"yes." Her voice became more steady. "I'll go now. I'll go home right now. It won't be easy. It will take..."
"Until tomorrow," he finished her sentence for her firmly.
"Until ... until tomorrow..." Her voice was a half-heard echo. But now she looked at him, her eyes seemed to become bluer, and she said, "Until tomorrow."
"Which is when I'll see you."
"Which is when I'll see you."
A light kiss-she rose from her chair-on his cheek. "A demain."
A light kiss-he half rose from his chair-on her cheek. "A demain"
Not looking back, hiking her large leather bag over her shoulder, she moved slowly away from the table. Not looking back, she made her slim straight-legged way, her shoulder blades almost as big as her breasts, to the open doorway through which the sunshine still streamed from L'Avenida de Cinco de Mayo. Not looking back, she stood there for a moment, a pale silhouette in the sunlight, and then she left the cafe, disappeared from his sight, out into the street where the late afternoon traffic of the city was louder than it had been before with the tooting of horns and the shrill shouts of newsboys.
Grafico! Grafico! Ultimas Noticias! Grafico!
Down the dam. Over Niagara in a barrel that broke. That's where he was now. Not unconscious, however, of General Miaja still sitting there calmly, of the white-aproned waitresses in the aisles that still swarmed, of the waning sunlight on the farthest green wall, where a bright bullfight poster was pasted alongside of a life-size gilt-framed rose-tinted photograph of Mexico's triple-chinned President.
Down the dam. Over the rocks. And yet why feel this way. Flight was still possible. But where he could flee? Back to New York? To Guatemala, to Costa Reca, to some other place in Mexico? Oh, flight, flight, flight. It all was a flight. No matter what he did now would be flight. Somehow he always worked himself into a situation where there was no way out but by flight. Worked himself into a situation? No, that wasn't it. For all of the actions, the motions, of living were, all of them, a flight from other actions, other motions, of living. That was it. Why, even General Miaja over there had fled into his general's uniform as surely as he had been forced to flee out of it.
"Oh, my God," murmured Rodney, "it's a sad world, anyway," as the waitress with the big tits set his beer in front of him.
"Gracias," he said, looking at her tits.
"Pot nada, senor."
He could swear that those big dreamy eyes of hers were looking at his cock. Her lips ... They sure were luscious. Should he ask her what she was doing tonight?
"What...?"
But the waitress had already turned and was walking away. He looked at her ass. He shrugged. He pulled his chair close to the table and put his hand on his cock. With his other hand he lifted the glass of beer to his lips.
"Yes," he murmured again, "yes, yes, yes. It's a sad world, anyway. Not many of us will get out of it alive..."
2
...of cocks and balls, of waterfalls ... of cunts pouring piss ... NO! He forced these images out of his mind and it was of ... gray afternoons of greeting ... traffic revolving ... a little rain., first names and small adventures ... that he thought as, two hours after leaving the cafe, Rodney West still sauntered through the streets of the capitaled plateau where now, all along L'Avenida Juarez, the neon lights flashed on, flashed off. And as he strolled past the imagine French facade of the Hotel Regis, noticing how a few of its rococo wrinkles had been too-no-ticeably lifted with chromium and stainless steel, he said to himself that one day the globe would be girdled by a red, white, and blue band of neon. sherwin williams cubren la tierra. He looked up at the sign, then at another: carta blanca exqtjisita! "Will you have one, senorita?" he added, smiling to himself, all to himself, as approaching the caballito, he felt all the early-evening loneliness of all the earth's unmated.
The caballito. A Spanish king-which Carlos?astride a rearing horse (astride ... astride ... she rode his rearing cock ... NO!), astride a rearing horse in the centre of this circle (in the centre ... the circle ... the navel ... the cunt NO!), in the centre of this circle, slightly smaller than Columbus, in New York. Oh, all the king's horses and all the king's men. Will Henry the Fourth, on the Pont Neuf in Paris, ever be put together again? ... steeples, parapets, and barns ... channel steamers, hedged-in farms ... Seeing the crazy cars circling the caballito, he thought of Oxford Circus and of Piccadilly. Looking at the gas-stationed entrance to the Paseo de la Reforma, he thought with longing of Coustou's equestrienned marbles at the entrance to the Champs Elysees.
Coming to the curb, he waited for a crowded autobus to-"Vamanos!"-get started before stepping down, stepping quickly back again, as another autobus, a tin crate bound for Coyoacan, hurtled by. He caught a cinematic glimpse of all the Indian faces, the herded Indian bodies, huddled together in the anemic light of the autobus interior before, with other busses, taxis, cars, trucks, and trolleys, it began-"Vamanos!"-to careen around the caballito, where several pedestrians were haplessly marooned. As, now, he waited for a clanging trolley to rock by, he looked above its yellow length at the National Lottery Building across the way, still, as in 1936 when he'd last been here, a rusty skeleton of girders.
Six years since 1936. Six years of wandering in the Western World-no, the Western Wilderness. For that is what the world had year by year become. A wilderness. Each year, since 1936, more wild. And who was it who had said that if the world were run by artists it would become "a howling wilderness"? A "howler," this, all right. And how, if not untrue, unproved. Unless, from some cosmetic outlook, one could say that Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill were painters as well as politicians. Still, perhaps the world was run by disappointed artists, if not by artists. And maybe that frustration-was what, among other things, was wrong with it. Among other things. Things like Lisbon earthquakes ... Quai Voltaire, rose in her hair ... Three years since 1939. Olivia. Where was she now? On the Quai Voltaire with a rose in her hair? Or was she still in Nice? And Fortune Riley. How would this trip to Mexico have turned out, what would it have been, had he not gone through
New Orleans on the way? Had he not, after three years of separation, seen Fortune Riley once again? Oh, Fortune! Fortune Riley! The rod's first worshiper! Thinking of her now, he remembered how she'd looked at it that first time and had said, "Rod, rod, I love you! No!"-she had pushed him away-"no, not you! This wonderful thing ... This rod!" She had gotten down on her knees to stare at it, to touch it, to kiss it, to suck it. Then, later, she had told him that she loved him, too.
Clang! The trolley began to move. "Ultimas No-ticias!" Clang! "Grafico!" He made his way"Va-manos!"-through the refulgent swirl of cars and people to where-"Para hoy!"-La Paseo de la Reforma stretched in the darkness toward Chapultepec. He turned up the Paseo, thinking about Fortune Riley...
Although he was near to being entirely unaware of it, he had stopped walking and was standing there under the night-hidden branches of the trees, looking up-up there, just above, and just beyond, yet in, yet of, the things that are the thing I am go flatly round-click-light, silent, gray, so shapeless hover they-click, click-oh, to seize them, hold them, SHAPE them!-click, click, some words, pleasure pleading, whispering, he caught one: "Quieres?" so sibilant, husky, and a hand, soft, on his sleeve, softly stroking, and a rouged young face next to his own. A white shirt in the obsidian night ... "I don't speak Spanish!" "Pero..." "No!"
Roughly, almost brutally, he pushed the boy away from him and continued to walk in the direction of Chapultepec. Fast. However, when he'd gone a little way he turned. Not back, but just to look. The boy was out of sight.
As if it were imperative, he walked over to a bench, thinking of all the times in his life when he'd turned back only to look, and of all the times, far fewer, when he'd turned back, and of the times-he could count them-when he'd pursued. The times? Only one time, really. The time with Olivia had been the only time. Oh, Olivia, the fair Olivia! She who had refused to worship the rod ... Yes, she had sucked it, sucked it, sucked it madly, and had loved him to fuck her in what she called a "normal" way, but she had never let him stick it up her ass, up her lovely Dutch ass that looked just like a Flemish painting, just as all of her, except that she was much more beautiful, resembled Cranach's Eve.
"Oh, Olivia, my darling, in a way I'm glad that you would never worship the rod..."
Murmuring this, he sat down, stretched his legs in front of him, lit a cigarette. He watched the steady stream of cars on the Paseo. He watched this, then that, pair of headlights come closer. He watched this, then that, car go by.
Jay Jalisco, no te rajes!
From nearby he could hear the popular tune. It must be coming from that cantina down that street, the one where he had met Lisa one afternoon. Lisa ... Oh, why wasn't she a bit more beautiful? Why couldn't he be going away with Fortune Riley now instead of with her? Why had Fortune been all beauty and no brains? Why was it that he had never been able to find both in anyone? Not even-no, not even in Olivia. Still-yes, he could try with Lisa. Tomorrow he could begin. Tomorrow ... He wondered, had she told Luis yet?
Involuntarily, he drew up his legs and turned to look behind him to see a shirt, very white in the darkness, and there, another, closer to him, outlined against a shuttered building. And now there, in the copper-hued candescence surrounding the nearest street lamp, he could see a full-lipped youth, black hair, black eyes, shining, black eyes fastened on him.
He threw his cigarette away, got up from the bench and, walking slowly away, he thought of Miguelito, of Lisa, of Olivia, of Fortune Riley, of New Orleans and...
PART TWO
1
Imagine! After three long years to walk into a praline shop in New Orleans, in Louisiana, and...
He crossed through the shade into the brilliance of the sunshine, his eyes searching for some sign of her beyond the open doorway that seemed to be a dark curtain covering a section of the sunny wall.
Nothing seemed to be real to him as he approached the doorway and was able to make out, deep in the cool interior of the shop, away back there inside of it, deep in the dimness, the familiar tall figure of Fortune. His heart thumping, he saw the old glint of gold and knew that-he stepped across the threshold-no one in the whole wide weary world but Fortune Riley could LOOM out of darkness in that way.
His eyes beginning to become accustomed to the sudden eclipse of the sunshine, he stood there just inside the doorway. There was a tightness in his throat. Something like a hard lump seemed to be swelling in it. Blood seemed to be beating against his eardrums as, tensely, silently, the street sounds seeming to be coming from a long way off, he looked beyond a shaded, shadowed sketch of tables and chairs and counters into the cool dim dove-colored light, to the rear of the shop where, in a kind of dusky antiquated gloom, she stood by a round table on which-she reached for it now with a needlessly large movement-was a telephone.
Click. It was so tiny, the receiver, so black against the flaming mass of her hair as, with a superfluous toss of it, she moved her head to one side...
Click. That hair, that red-gold gorgeous hair, falling, just as it used to fall, like the mane of some exquisite animal, over the military loveliness of her shoulders...
Click. His eyes blurred a little as he noticed the suit that she wore, the way it accentuated the massive litheness of her back, the skirt of it seeming to be caught in at the knees, as it always used to be...
Click. Still blurred, his eyes saw how, as of old, her buttocks, while not especially large, seemed to be bursting out of the material that covered them...
Click. He looked lower and could only think of advertisements for silk stockings.
Once more-click-he listened to her twist the dial of the telephone. Half holding his breath, he tried to remember what the rest of her was like. He wet his lips, remembering every inch of her, every nook-he smiled-and cranny. So what in the hell-he moved from the doorway-was he getting so worked up about? For without newness there was no mystery, and without mystery there was no ... Oh, maybe he should turn and go ... But ... but she was turning around!
A kind of glaze came over his eyes now, but the words, "Hello, baby," shd smoothly enough from his lips, and, "How are you?"
He heard the sound of something drop to the floor. It was-the filminess seemed to be swabbed away from his eyes-the telephone. Holding himself rigid, he stared ahead of him to see her staring back at him as if he were an apparition. Her eyes ... They were so big, so blue, so beautiful. Her mouth ... It was a red wound. Its corners were aquiver. Otherwise there was no sign of recognition on her face, except for a continuation of the quiver from the curveless corners of her mouth up, up the broad high planes of her cheeks, so smooth and slightly hollowed, down, down, almost imperceptibly, to the rounded strength of her chin, to the white column of her throat. He stepped back. Then, however, complete calm came over him and he stepped forward, ready for...
She seemed to bound towards him. Her big straight teeth gleamed in the gloom. She gave a kind of gasp. Flinging her arms outward, she cried, "Baby!"
There was the sound of what seemed to be a thousand things dropping to the floor and all he knew was that her arms were around him, close and tight, smothering him, squeezing him to death. All he knew was that her lips were on his cheeks, his nose, his mouth, his ears, his chin. He almost laughed. It was like being bitten by a great big beautiful horse. But the beginning of laughter quickly left him and surprise surpassed relief as, hearing the honey honeyed huskiness of her "Darling..." he felt her tongue pressing hard against his teeth, trying to force his mouth open.
Unprepared for the onslaught of her embrace, he became befuddled. Yet behind all of his befuddlement, his confusion, was the amaze of "Can she love me still?" and "It is possible?" as, tentatively, his seeking hers, the tips of their tongues touched. No more, however, than that. For now, with a violent, almost savage, movement, she pushed him away from her and stepped back to hold him at arms' length, her eyelashes fluttering as if she were winking tears away. She seemed to be exceedingly overwrought. Her teeth seemed to be biting into the fruit of her closed lips. Then, as if she had bitten through them, her lips parted, she drew in her breath and, smiling at him with a kind of coy excessive first-row chorus gayness, she said, "Well!"
He caught the hint. For that was what all of this was. like all of her hints-he smiled-so gentle. He, too, stepped back. Her fingers let go of the sleeves of his jacket. His smile adjusted itself to hers.
So now it could begin. The "we're still good friends" game could begin ... This was more Like it. For this he was quite prepared. And so, quite coolly now, he said, "Surprised?"
"The heart stood still," she said (he'd almost forgotten how low and liquid her voice was). "But now," she added, placing a hand on the lapel of her jacket, "it is pitting and patting."
Making a pitting and patting motion with her-hand over the slight swell of her breast, she nodded her head from side to side. But it seemed more a shake of the head than a nod. Just as there seemed to be something exaggerated about the enthusiasm with which she now said, "Rodney you're a sight for the eyes!"
Her big blue eyes smiled at him, but then became troubled and serious. She looked away from his face. She looked at his necktie. Then, deliberately, she looked at the crotch of his trousers. He put his hand to his cock, but indifferently, as if he didn't know that she was looking, as if he didn't know that she was remembering the hundreds of times-he took his hand away from his cock-that he'd fucked her and buggered her. He looked at her lips. Would his cock ever be kissed, sucked, licked, by them again? How many times had she gone down on him? How many times had he gone down on her? How many times had she worshiped the rod? But-he began to feel his cock get hard-he hadn't come here for this. He ... he didn't want her now. It was ... yes, it was all over between them. So, hastily, not knowing exactly what to say, he said, "Are you ... are you happy now, Fortune?"
Her eyes were still riveted on the crotch of his trousers. She seemed to be unable to take them away from it. But then, with a jerk, she lifted her head and said, "Wha...? What?"
"I simply asked you if you were happy now." "Oh ... oh, more or less," she said, with a shake of her shoulders, a theatrical toss of her head.
He cleared his throat, wondering if the "we're still good friends" game was going to begin, wondering if he had walked into something more than he had bargained for, wondering if he wanted it (what as ass, what a cunt, what a body she had, what a mouth!), wondering ... Did he want it? What should he say now? Do?
He half closed his eyes, desire for her beginning to be strong in him as he smelled the same old sweet old musky smell of her. Now he had a real hard-on. He mustn't let her know. He stepped away from the table where they were standing. He heard a crunchy sound. He glanced down. "Good Lord, Fortune. Look..." Strewn all around them, scattered on the floor, were pralines in bits and pieces.
"Oo-la-la!" said Fortune, bending down to begin picking them up, making all kinds of funny remarks as she did so.
Rodney laughed, relieved at the change in the atmosphere. Still the same old silly Fortune ... "Here, let me help you," he now said, and stooped down to pick up a few broken fragments of pralines.
She said, "That's all right, don't bother, baby," but he continued to pick up pieces of the candy and drop them into a brown paper bag that she held in one hand as, with the other, she scooped up more candy, all the while laughing breathlessly, all the while bombarding him with questions: "How long have you been way down Souf, honey child?" and "Where're you coming from, Rodney?" and "Where're you heading for, Rodney?" and "How did you find me here, baby?"
All of his earlier anxiety had abated. He was near to being at ease and so, it seemed, was she as now they both rose to face one another again. He ht a cigarette for her. He lit one for himself.
"Well, you see, Fortune," he said, "I was just over at your house..."
"You saw Fredo?"
There was something tremulous about the tone of her voice, something spasmodic about the way that she turned from him only to turn to him again, her eyebrows raised a bit timorously, but eagerly, emphasizing her question.
"Sure..." He faltered. "Why," he now demanded, "anything wrong about that? I ... I thought that we could all have dinner together tonight. On me, of course..."
"I'd like," she said, "to cover the table with the finest Spanish lace, put out the best silver candlesticks, and press a duck for you, but the idea, baby, is not so good."
"But why not?"
"Fredo is a very funny man." The wanness of her smile could only be seen in her eyes. The rest of her face merely smiled. "He is," she added, "tres jafoux."
"Oh." Rodney laughed more at her consciously comic pronunciation of French than at anything else. "Well, for God's sake," he said then, "he doesn't have to be jealous of me."
"Oh, I know that" she said, a hint of cruelty hovering over the bigness and fullness of her lips, "oui, it is tout fini between us"-she laughed now
-"so...."
"So," Rodney repeated, with the tiniest trace of chagrin in his voice, "he doesn't have to be jealous of me."
"But he is."
"How so?"
"Baby..." The word, low, sweet, like honey, left her lips, seeming to bathe him in a curiously un-tender tenderness as she took hold of one of his hands and drew him after her to the rear of the shop where, not looking at him, she now said, "You underestimate yourself. Do you think I didn't used to talk about you to him?"-He thought that he heard a tremor in her voice. His cock, which had gone soft, began to get hard again-"Do you think," she went on, "that I didn't used to cry about you sometimes?"
As they came to the round table by which she had been standing when he had entered the shop, his hard-on was complete. He would like to make her cry now, cry for mercy! But he'd better go easy, so he said, "I missed you, too. I..."
"Oh, you don't have to be so polite, Rodney."
She almost snapped these words at him, her teeth in the gloomy light whiter than they were, her lip a darker red.
"No," she went on, letting go of his hand, a blank coldness coming into her eyes, "that was a long time ago. Today it's Fredo. Not you." The honey of her voice seemed to him to freeze now, to be congealed. "And I wouldn't," she concluded, "hurt Fredo for anything in the world."
"Well, who's asking you to?"-Rodney's voice was belligerent, querulous, as he felt the pressure of his prick against his trousers relax-"I only thought that we could all have dinner together, that..."
"Well, that's out. Fredo wouldn't like it."
"So you're in love with him?"
She pouted. Her lips ... They were so succulent. She picked up the telephone. She picked up a chair that had also fallen to the floor. She set it straight, at the same time saying, "Fredo is wonderful. He's very good. He's very kind."
Rodney laughed, not daring to say that Fredo's prick was probably kinder than he was. He knew his Fortune ... Yes, she liked to be fucked good and hard, good and long (he thought of the times when he'd fucked her for almost an hour before he would let himself come). But he only said, "And of course, Fortune, I'm neither good nor kind."
"Oh, Rodney,"-her voice was melting-"you'll always be wonderful to me. Always. Always." Her words, although still staccato, were very moist "But..."
"No buts!"
Roughly, but not too roughly, he pushed her against the table, grasping her by the shoulders as he did so. Then he moved his hands to her tits and, through the cloth of her suit, he squeezed them, squeezed them hard.
"Rodney..."
Her voice was barely audible. Her eyes were closed. Her hands gripped the edge of the table. She leaned back as far as she could.
He took one of his hands from one of her tits but continued to squeeze the other tit hard, hard, as hard as he could, while he unzipped his fly and took hold of his cock which, again, was fully erect.
"You forget," he said. "You forget," he repeated, and pulled one of her hands from the edge of the table to make it touch the hot throbbing skin of his thick rampant rod.
"No, no I don't," she said, her voice deep down in her throat, "No, no I don't," she said again and, as he took his hand from hers, she dug her fingernails into his cock.
"Bitch!" he said and, pulling her hand away from his cock, he leaned forward to bite her lips.
As he did this she fell backwards and they both fell onto the large round table, their feet still touching the floor. His cock pushed into the cloth of her skirt while her hand, which he had pulled away, blindly searched for it. He took his mouth from hers.
"Rodney ... Please, please..."
"What?" he answered, his voice as low, as tight, as tense, as choked-up, as hers.
"Let me see it again. Let me see my dear darling rod again ... Please let me see it. Please, Rodney, please..."
She had opened her eyes and was looking at him. Her eyes were bluer than blue in the dim light. Her big red lips lay open. Her breath came short and fast.
"No!"
Springing back, he put his cock into his trousers again. Then, standing straight, he looked down at her and said, "So! So today it's Fredo, not me..."
She closed her eyes again. Her hands gripped the table again. Her mouth was still open. Her breath still came short and fast. Yes, he thought, I'll show her ... I'll show her that I can tease a cunt as well as she can tease a cock. But, "Yes," she said then and he knew that he had played and lost, for...
She opened her eyes and pulled herself away from the table. Then, not looking at him, she smiled and said, "Yes, I need Fredo and he needs me and you are I are tout fini. Hah!" She laughed her deep rich laugh, but he thought that he could discern a high hysterical note in it. "I'm a poetess!" she cried, "a maker of verse..."
"A maker of men, you mean. Than which nothing is verse," said Rodney, to which she laughed, groaning, and said, "Not so punny, baby," to which he laughed and said noting, thinking about her and Oviedo, feeling terribly deflated now, terribly let down, feeling, even, a vague sense of injury, of genuine hurt. And, "Oh, to hell with her and to hell with her damned old Fredo," he said to himself as he turned away from the table.
"Where you going, baby?"
"Oh..." "
He said nothing, not knowing what to say.
"Don't go," she said, "come here, Rodney, and let me get a good look at you."
With an extravagant gesture she reached for the dark green shade that covered the window behind her. She yanked at the little circular tassel. The shade shot upward and for a few seconds whipped wildly around the runner, flapping noisily, as sunlight streamed into the shop, making her hair glisten in all shades of red and gold. He moved a step nearer to her.
"No, don't look at me!" she cried, lifting her hands to her face.
"But"-he smiled-"you look swell," he said quietly, noticing, however, as she lowered her hands and averted her eyes, that the lines running down from the corners of her nose were deeper than they had been three years before and that little lines had begun to faintly etch the corners of her mouth while, "You don't look a day older," he went on, as she stared at him with a sort of strenuous shyness and he saw that the lines were also beginning to be noticeable at the corners of her eyes.
"And you," she said, "just the same as ever.
Just as beautiful as ever, Rodney boy." She touched his chin with one of her big blunt fingers (he'd forgotten how ugly her hands were). "A bit, however on the heavier side,"-she took her hand away from his chin to flick the same finger at the buckle of his belt;-"but," she continued, "it is tres becoming. Yes, the added avor-dupwah is an improvement ... No, Rodney, don't look at me!" she exclaimed now, violently backing away from him.
"Still so silly, aren't you?" he said, his fingers reaching out to lightly touch one of her breasts.
"Go 'way, you nasty man!" she cried. "No more of that! No..."
"But I thought that you wanted to see the rod. Wouldn't you like to see it now? It's so nice and bright in here now. It's..."
Before she could answer him they both turned to look in the direction of the doorway where three little old ladies stood, primly, peering into the shop.
"I'll bet they'd like to see the rod," said Rodney, "just think how lucky you are, Fortune. They'll die guessing..."
"Sh-h-h," Fortune whispered, laughing a little, but she looked away from the doorway to look at the crotch of his trousers again.
"You really want to see it again, don't you? And worship it and..."
"Worship it, worship it," she murmured softly, but then, as if pulling herself together, she raised her eyes, looked at the three little old ladies and whispered, "You'd better go now."
"Can't you have lunch with me?"
"No, not today. I really can't, baby," she whispered again, advancing towards the doorway.
"Well then, how about a drink later?" he half pleaded, following her insistently.
"All right," she said, meet me at Hennessey's around the corner at five-thirty ... Good morning" she said now to the three old ladies, one of whom, the taffeta of her dress making a crinkly sound, seemed to be alarmed, to be taken aback by Fortune, as she mildly murmured, "My friends and I would like to purchase some pralines."
Rodney brushed past the old ladies, threw a last glance at Fortune who was saying, "You've come to the right place, girls," as he stepped through the doorway out into the high-noon sunniness of New Orleans, land of dreams...
2
Here he was in Hennssey's, not dead, just dreamy, drunk. Here he was in Hennessey's waiting for Fortune Riley, so...
Dreamily, dreamily, he drained his glass and dreamily, dreamily, rose from his seat to sway dreamily, dreamily, and sit down again to dream a dream of this, a dream of that, a dream...
"Hello, sweet."
...of Fortune. A dream of Fortune's voice, of Fortune's lips, of Fortune's lips sucking his cock as...
"Fortune awaits Mr. Rodney West," he heard her say and-he shivered; his shoulders straightened-it was no dream.
"You mean Mis-Fortune," he replied, with a sudden self-possession, and turned sideways to smile up at her. And up and up. And up and up. And up.
"Oh, that old crack," she laughed.
The tone of her voice was flippant. But her eyes were tender. And blue. So blue as, now, she placed one of her big thick-fingered hands upon his knee.
He stroked her hand with a fondness that, for all his curiously sudden self-possession, was far from feigned. She withdrew her hand from his to slap it lightly, laugh, and then, with what seemed to be great good sature, she poked him with her elbow, causing him to gasp a little. He gripped the corbel of the bar. Then, laughing with her, at her, getting one foot straight, the other, he stood up.
"Hold on, baby," she said as she took him by the arm. "Well!" she said then, "the machinery is well oiled I see."
"Naw"-he made the movement of pulling his arm away from her, but he didn't really try to get away from her firm grasp-"naw," he went on mumbling, "I'm not drunk, I'm not, I ... uh..."
"Not beaucoup, perhaps, but I would say assez," she said. "Come, sweet,"-her voice was a husky whisper-"we'd better go over to a table in a comer that is cosy where"-her fingers pressed into the muscle of his arm-"you and I won't be too closely observed by all zee people curious."
"Hiyah, Fortune."
"Hello, Jake," she said, her words seeming to Rodney to have a low seductive sound. (But, he made haste to reassure himself, didn't all her words have a low seductive sound?)
The man named Jake was looking up-and up-at Fortune with almond-shaped brown eyes that seemed to Rodney to be a bit too goddamned knowing. His hair was wavy. His nose was straight. (Too wavy, thought Rodney, too straight.) His lips were large. His lips were full. (Too large, thought Rodney, too full.) Had this good looking son of a bitch fucked Fortune? Had those large full lips kissed and sucked and licked her tits, gone down on her, down ... He thought of her cunt now, her glorious pink and gold cunt, and of all the pricks (unknown to him, and probably to her, the tramp) that had penetrated its hot interior, banging in to ride away on the white wave of her body...
Thus-in, out, in, out-crept, crawled, the little headless worm of jealousy. And, "Get out, get out," he said to it silently. And, "What do you care?" he said to himself.
He came very close to her, so that his arm, linked in hers, pushed her arm against her body. "Come on, Fortune," he said, paying no attention to Jake's curious regard of him as, "I'll be seein' yuh," Jake said to her and she said, "O.K., Jake."
"Who was that?"
"Oh, he's a good gent," said Fortune as they left the bar, "he's a friend of Fredo's. That's why"-her words, although staccato, were siren smooth "I didn't introduce you." Once more her fingers pressed into the muscle of his arm. "Excuse please, baby?"
Hennessey's was hazed with smoke, but to him candlesticks of ornate silver were topped with flickering flames of bud-shaped gold as-the ballroom was brilliant; violins were playing-he looked-it was a dream of Danubian delight-into the wide baby-blue innocence of her eyes.
"Oh, sure, sure," he said, appeased, feeling as if he'd been washed with honey, swaying closer to her, wanting to kiss those luscious lips of hers, to bite deep into them, to suck and suck and suck the hot sweet juice of her blood.
"Don't baby," she whispered, as he attempted to put his arm around her waist, "everybody knows me here."
"I'll say they do," he said with something of exasperation, as "Hiyah, Fortune?" "Hello there, kid," "How's the girl?" followed their slow progress to a far corner of the room where, again, the worm crawled in and the worm crawled out as he stood by the table feeling terribly giddy and smiled down at her (she had sat down) sarcastically. He held on hard to the table's edge. Then, trying to make his voice acid, he said, "All friends of Fredo's?"
"Why, ba-fey!"
She was holding up her big long arms, holding them up and out to him, and her face was like a big smooth peach to him as he thought: "Jealousy is born with love, but does not always die with it," for his love for her (but had he ever had any love for her? for anyone? even for Olivia?) was dead. Dead as a doornail.
Still smiling sarcastically (or trying to), he thought of how he could improve upon La Rochefoucauld and say that in a certain sense jealousy is born before love, the only jealousy that he had ever known having been a jealousy of the other person's past. No, in the ordinary sense, the usual way, the direct way, he had never known jealousy, had never permitted himself to be jealous (for hadn't he signed the Declaration of Anticipation?), and he flattered himself that he (the Great Anticipator) had never had any cause to be jealous. However, if he ever did have cause-he swayed and swayed and swayed-he would be Saint Rodney. "Saint Rodney and the Green-eyed Monster." He could see the lithographs, the engravings, in the books, the stained-glass windows in cathedrals, the murals, the frescoes, the innumerable paintings, of the heroic scene. He would become legendary. He closed his eyes. "Ba-by!"
He opened his eyes to stare down at her. He felt less giddy. The camera was at just the right angle. The lens was perfectly adjusted. And there she was in completely correct focus, leaning back against a green leather cushion of a bench that blended beautifully with the rose-rusty brick of a wall. It could be San Francisco. It could be New York. But-no more camera; he looked down and bit his hp-it was New Orleans. Not, however, New Orleans, land of dreams, for ... She was no longer Fortune Riley. She was...
"Mrs. Oviedo," said the waiter, "I'll be with you in a moment."
Rodney began to sway again. He stepped a step closer to the bench and, again, he said, "All friends of Fredo's?"
"Why, Rodney baby," she crooned as she patted the leather-cushioned seat with restrained but energetic pats, "come here, sit down, sweet. Sit down by your Fortune. And don't look so mournful, baby."-She raised (hopefully, he thought) her penciled eyebrows.-"Don't tell me," she now said, "that Milford Rodney has the jealousy?"
Milford Rodney have the jealousy? The jealousy? He reeled a little. Then, standing straight staring straight, standing straight and staring straight, he unfurled his banner. He became Saint Rodney. He unsheathed his sword. Oh, would that he could take his cock out! So she'd called him "Milford." So she remembered. So maybe ... Ah, but...
"Hell, no!" he said and thought that he saw a quiver of chagrin touch the curveless corners of her mouth. "Hell, no!" he repeated, "it's just that I'm in a bad mood."
But he felt far from badly as he sat down, sat down fast, almost falling, sat down on her hand with which she was still insistently patting the cushion of the seat. And now he felt her hand on his ass, felt it move forward, slowly, scratching, her fingernails digging into the cloth of his trousers.
"Oh, rod, rod," he heard her murmur, and he knew that it wasn't his name that she was murmuring.
"Oh, rod, rod," she murmured again and grabbed him by the balls.
He pushed his buttocks down hard, so that the lower part of her arm was caught between them.
"Let go," she said, "or..."
"Or what?" he said and turned to look at her, his lips parted in a sneer. The smile that was on her lips left them and she squeezed his balls, but not hard enough to hurt.
"Go ahead," he said, "hurt me. But if you do I'll..."
All at once she seemed to re-realize where she was and who she was (now) and, "Oh, darling," she said, and let go of his balls. "Oh, darling," she said again, "it's ... it's just that I can't believe that you're here."
The bitch, he thought, and was about to say, "You know God damned well that I'm here. Get under the table and suck my cock," when he saw the waiter come up to the table, and so...
"Nor I," he said and lifted his ass to release her hand.
"Yes, Mrs. Oviedo?"
For a few seconds she sat there, the wound of her red mouth aquiver. Then she looked up and said, "Oh, hello ... Hello, Hector."
Rodney looked at Fortune who, as she spoke to the waiter, took her hand from his. "What'll you have?" he asked, but he didn't wait for an answer and said to the man, "I'll have a Canadian Club and soda."
"Make mine," she said, "a Martini, Hector. Tres dry." "Yes, Mrs. Oviedo."
When the waiter went away she bounced to one side. The bench bounced, too. Then she said, "Now tell me, Rodney, tell me all. What've you been doing these many years and...?"
"Well,"-he looked down; he examined his fingernails-"Well," he said, and "Well," again, "you know that I went back to Europe after we busted up and..."
He stopped examining his fingernails. He placed his left hand, palm downward, on the seat between them.
"Yes," she said so softly, so sweetly, her voice a honeyed whisper.
She squeezed his hand. He looked at her. Her eyes were staring into her lap. Her long eyelashes, which he knew not to be, seemed real. There was the tiniest bump, almost imperceptible, below the ridge of her small nose, reliving its straightness, lending a touch of haughtiness to the beautifully etched line that extended from her forehead down around the firm curve of her chin. Her perfectly shaped ear was very small and ivory white against the gold-streaked mass of her hair. In profile her face lost all trace of the theatric coarseness that it sometimes had. To him, looking at her now, it had the quality of an exquisite cameo. It reminded him of a Renaissance medallion, of a brooch made of mother-of-pearl, of a royal intaglio struck off in Limoges.
"Yes," she said again, squeezing his hand harder, "after you left for Europe I used to wake up at nights screaming. In my dreams I saw you over there in Spain and..."
In Spain ... In Spain?! He withdrew his hand from hers. Instantly he was stark staring sober once again and the pain that he felt was very real. All the alcohol in the world could never dull it, deaden it. And, as when at other times he thought of Spain, small shmy beasts began to feed upon the flower that once-the first day-must have been his heart.
Mutedly he said to her, "But I didn't go to Spain. It was all over by the time I got there," and as he said this he felt better, actually believing that if Barcelona had held out longer, if the Civil War had lasted, he would have gone to Spain. But then, frowning, he faced the fact of his pusillanimous belligerences. Immediately, however, still frowning, he closed off all channels to his mind and said to himself that war is war wherever it is and that, like the world, it is vile.
His forehead furrowed with two deep lines, he now turned to her and said, "I've changed, Fortune. Today I'm willing to let others do my fighting for me. As if it were"-he sneered-"my fighting. Yes, I've trained my conscience to caress instead of chastise me. You see, I've been reading Nietzsche. I am now," he smiled sardonically, "beyond good, beyond evil."
She took hold of his hand again. She looked him full in the face. She said, "I'm still the illiterate, baby. I don't know from nothin' about Neechi-Nee-chi. Who is he? A Jap? But I can see," she went on as he laughed at her, "that there's a change for the better in you, baby. Now maybe you'll be happier..."
He smiled, shrugged, took his hand from hers only to begin stroking her hand softly, softly, softly, as if thanking her for what was a kind of consolation. Oh, she was wonderful, he thought. She was so marvelously amoral. If he were a gunman she'd be the perfect moll for him.
"What," she was saying, "is going to happen with you about the army...?"
"Oh, I'm out of that, at least for now," he said, "4F."
"How did you ever rate 4F, baby? The body-"she tapped his chest with her fingers (he coughed)-"Looks very robust to me."
"Ah," he said somewhat slyly, "but the mind is in a state of carefully calculated disintegration."
"I get it," she said, laughing, "oh, Rodney, you're the smartest sonofabitch I've ever known. Christ," she added, "more guys are trying to get out of it here, but can't."
"Same thing in New York," he said.
"How's little old New York?"
And now, as the waiter returned to the table and set their drinks in front of them, he told her how this one was and how that one was and how this was now and that. She snuggled closer to him. He stopped talking. He pressed his lips against her hair. He closed his eyes.
He was no longer in Hennessey's and all that he could hear was her breathing and his own. It was, hers and his together, something like what being under an oxygen tent must be like. He smiled. How could he think of such a thing right now? But then his smile vanished as the same old sweet old musky smell of her enveloped him. Softly, softly. No, he was no longer in Hennesseys, in New Orleans...
He was, softly, softly, enclosed in a dark, a silky, cocoon. In a cocoon in the land of Cockaigne. He pressed his lips harder against her hair. Softly, softly, he moved his mouth to her ear. Softly, softly, with the tip of his tongue he licked the little white elastic-like lobe of it. She shuddered. Her hand moved along his thigh to touch, then squeeze, his half-hard cock. She shuddered again. He murmured, "Darling..."
"Oh, my rod, my rod," he could hear her say as he felt her fingers press at his cock through the gray flannel cloth of his trousers.
Eyes still closed, he moved his hand down along her firm thigh until he reached her big knee. Moving forward, but not disturbing her hand on his prick, he reached under her skirt and, his fingers caressing her smooth cool flesh, moved his hand up until it reached her silk panties.
"No," she said, but faintly.
As answer, he stuck the tip of his tongue into her ear and, working his fingers under the silk of her panties, arrived at her cunt. It was wet, hot and wet. He squeezed it hard, his fingernails scraping the tender lips, and then, as she made a movement of protest, he stuck his three middle fingers all the way into her.
"Rodney," she whispered and unzipped his fly to put her hand through the slit of his shorts and grasp his now-rigid cock.
"Fortune," he whispered, taking his tongue from her ear, "Fortune," he whispered again, half-opening his eyes to look at her.
Her eyes were closed. Her breast was heaving almost imperceptibly, but it was definitely heaving as she sucked in her full red lips to breathe hard, ever harder.
Smiling a slight smile of triumph, Rodney worked his fingers farther into her cunt and while she held on to his cock as if she would never, could never, let go of it, he slowly, but rhythmically, worked his three fingers in, out, of her, then let them stay in her to move them about in every direction. It was as if he were moulding the hot wet walls of her cunt.
"Oh God, oh God," she whispered, her whisper less whisper than moan.
"Is the rod still your God?" he said softly but firmly, and looked at her closed eyelids flutter.
Saying nothing, she nodded her head affirmatively and her eyelids still fluttered, but then, her whole body stiffening, she took her hand from his cock and, almost roughly pulled his hand away from her cunt.
"Don't," he said and tried to push his hand back where it had been, but then, roughly this time, almost angrily, saying, "Rodney, stop it!" she pushed him away from her, all the way away.
"What,"-she was sitting back, her head averted from him-"What,"-her voice was edged with nervous laughter-"are you trying to do? Break up my happy home?"
"Is it so happy?" he asked, trying not to let his voice reveal a disappointment that bordered on anger. "Is it so happy?" he asked again as, smoothing his rumpled hair with the palm of his hand, he sat back and watched her straighten hers with big quick hit-and-miss movements.
She said nothing. She opened her enormous leather handbag. She took out a little mirror and a lipstick. Her broad face was impassive. But her peach-colored cheeks rippled ever so slightly, the little ripples running up, up, in the direction of her prominent high cheek-bones.
"Well, is it?" he repeated, reaching for his drink, watching her with narrowed eyes as, with one two three four pats of the powder puff, she seemed to be hitting her nose.
"I love Fredo," she said then, turning to look at him resentfully.
"Methinks thou doth," he began, but then, "Listen, baby," he said, "maybe you do love Fredo. And it's O. K. by me-a glacier, however, seemed to be moving through the sea of his stomach, northward, northward, to the region of his heart-"but you still seem to be wasting yourself. You, who could have had anything in San Francisco, in New York, in Paris ... Why, for God's sake," he said now with a great show of irritation, "do you have to sell pralines in that shop around the corner?"
"There you go again, Rodney! That's the one thing I always hated about you!"-her blue eyes were flashing but cold-"always talking about money, money, money!" Her voice was bitter with contempt. "It just so happens," she continued, with a queenly toss of her head, "that we're kind of broke at the moment. But most of the time we live in regal splendor, I'll have you know."
He took a drink. The glacier that had been floating within him, like cold granite that would not sink, now split into two icy slabs. Between them, freezing, was his heart. But as he finished the drink and the ice cubes clinked against his teeth, his face was flushed and blood seemed to be bang-bang-bang-bang-banging in his ears. He set the glass down on the table. Not looking at her, he said, "All right. Touche. Maybe I do think about money too much. But was I ever stingy with you?"
"Oh, God, no, baby," she said, laying her hand on his knee, "you were always so generous, so good, to me, so..."
She seemed almost as if she had wounded herself. She was so very contrite. But, like a canker, what she had said about his concern for money continued to gnaw at him as, coldly, he said: "Let's have another drink."
"Rodney," she said, "you can't have another drink. You've had enough."
"Well!"-he paused-"I never expected Fortune Riley"-each word was wavily underlined with annoyed laughter-"to turn into Carrie Nation. Say, waiter!" he called.
She removed her hand from his knee. She sat there in silence as he ordered drinks for both of them. Then, as the waiter left, she said, "I've got to go right after this one."
"Aren't you going to have dinner with me tonight? You and Fredo?"
"Oh no, baby, I thought I told you ... Do you know," she said, "that right after you left the shop this morning Fredo came around all in an uproar because you were here?"
"He did?"
"Yes." "Well..."
"Well then, you see the situation, don't you, Rodney?" "Yes," he said, "do you?"
For the first time today, for the first time in three years, their eyes met understandingly. All hunger for the other was unconcealed in his eyes, in hers. It was not necessary for him to touch her now. In fact, he moved an inch away from her and, still looking into her eyes, he saw in them what she saw: his cock, his tool, his prick, his rod ... his rod and her gorgeous cunt. In her eyes he saw his balls, his heavy balls and her big lips on them, licking them. In her eyes he saw her digging her nails into the flesh of his arms, his legs, his ass, as he bit her tits and bit her mouth and bit her ears and fucked her. In her eyes he saw her remembering the times he'd beaten her, the times she'd beaten him. In her eyes ... But now...
"Oh, thank you, Hector."
"Shall I mix yours, sir?"
"No, I'll mix it myself."
"How long do you expect to be in New Orleans, Rodney?"
"Oh, cut it, Fortune! The waiter's gone."
She seemed to utterly ignore this as in one gulp, she downed her Martini. Then she looked at him with the brightest bluest blankness. Then she said, "If you're going to be here for awhile be sure to look into the shop some day. I must"-she half rose from the bench-"be running along now."
"All right," he said (two could play at this game), "I'll do that. But I don't expect to be here for more than a few days."
She stood up.
"Oh, don't bother," she said.
"All right, I won't."
He fell back against the green leather cushion of the bench from where, through the filminess that blurred his vision, he saw her standing there, sort of shimmering above him, waving her fingers at him gaily, as if she were playing the piano with them.
"Oh-revwah!"
"So long," he said, trying hard to keep his voice from sounding sullen.
She turned her back on him. Oh, the military loveliness of that back and those broad shoulders! He sat forward and began to drum his fingers on the table as he watched her walk through the room, watched her wave to this one and to that one with the same piano-playing movement of her hand. All the way to the doorway he watched her walk, holding his breath as whenever he had watched her in the past, thinking that at any moment she was going to knock a chair, a table, over. Or even a telephone booth.
"God, what a big bitch she is!" he muttered, tears coming to his eyes as she disappeared through the doorway and Hennessey's-he blinked-suddenly seemed to be more spacious. He looked at the glass-full of whisky in front of him. He poured it down his throat.
"Waiter!"
He sank back. The whole room reeled around him. It was a revolving stage. (Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern...)
"What ho! Horatio!"
"Yes, sir? Can I do anything for you, sir?"
"Oh ... oh, hello Hector. Yes," he said, "you can bring me another shot of Canadian Club."
3
How he had gotten here to the corner of St. Louis Street and Chartres he didn't know. Except that he had walked all the way. Of this he was sure, although he wasn't sure how many drinks he'd had since leaving Hennessey's.
Leaning against the wall of a building, he looked at the lights of a bar on the other side of the street and listened to the sound of voices and to the sound of a voice that was louder than the rest. It must-"He's down! He's up!"-be coming from a radio. Should he go over and have just one more drink before he went back to the hotel? Maybe. Just one more. Then he'd go to bed and tomorrow, at the crack of dawn, he'd get the hell out of here, go on to Mexico.
One more. No more. He stepped forward, heading for the curb, but before he could reach it he slipped and fell to the sidewalk. For a few seconds he simply lay sprawled there, one side of his face flat on the pavement. For a few more seconds he lay there, not moving. Why wasn't Fortune here to pick him up? To pick him up as she used to do in San Francisco, in New York, in Paris? To pick him up, then grab him by the cock and say, "Sober up, baby, sober up! I want the rod tonight, I want it bad!" Oh God, what he'd give to have her here with him right now...
Picking himself up, he dragged himself back to the building where, once more slouching against the damp mouldy stone of the wall, he now thought of ah the times when he'd picked Fortune up to beat her until she was sober, to beat her until she had bled...
"Goin' any place, honey?"
like thin syrup spun around a spoon, the melodiously muted voice preceded the small strange figure out of the dark wet gloom of the fog. It ... it was a girl, a colored girl. A "high yaller," he could see, as she came close to him, but shyly, the clothing on her slight body seeming to be pathetically patched and pinned together.
"No," he said, saying it as kindly as he could, but not too kindly.
She stood there holding a shiny purse under one of her sweatered armpits. Her big buck teeth were gleaming in the darkness as, with a sad sort of happiness, she said, "Then you come along with me, honey. All you gotta do is follow me down the street..."
"No, I mean I can't go with you," he said. "Oh, tha's too bad, honey. Johnnie-Mae could show you a fine time." "Who's Johnnie-Mae?"
"Why, honey"-her voice expressed a mild surprised-"tha's me."
He stepped forward, stepped back, said, "No."
"All right, honey"-her voice was a sad ritualistic singsong, entirely acquiescent. She moved a little away from him-"Ah's a-goin'," she said now, somewhat fearfully, a thread of harshness in her voice as the sound of heavy footsteps approached along the sidewalk and she disappeared quickly, as she had come.
Damn it, why hadn't he gone with her? Now-he took hold of his soft cock and peered into the mist-it was too late...
"There's the bell!"
Again he listened to the loud faceless voice blaring through the mist. Yes ... One more, no more, and with what he knew must appear to be a very comical effort he pulled himself together to slowly, carefully, walk to the curb, step down, cross the narrow street and, feeling himself to be in absolute control of his body now, make his way to the half-open door of the bar and push it all the way open. But, alas, alas...
"Oooops, I'm on my ass!"
"Maybe you'd better get out o' here, bud."
Almost a foot taller than Rodney, the man who roughly helped him to his feet squinted down at him through snaky Southern eyes that resembled nothing so much as the crack of a whip.
"Oh, I'm all right. Just slipped," said Rodney, edging away from him and to the bar, where he forced his way in between two people.
God, but it was hot here. And noisy. It made him think of Saturday night in New York as, squeezed in there, failing to catch the bartender's eye, he looked past a blue-toned photograph of Roosevelt to a sign that hung just above the cash register. The sign had a drawing of a donkey in the center of it. Above the donkey were the words: if you're not a 100 per cent american get your. Below the donkey were the words: out of here.
Rodney smiled, sneered, then looked at Roosevelt's thin abstinent lips, at his pale weak eyes, at the jutting obstinacy of his chin, and...
"I hate war," he said aloud, nodding his head from side to side, holding thumb and finger to the bridge of his nose as if he were adjusting a pince-nez, "Eleanor hates war. I hate Eleanor..."
"Listen, bud..."
Rodney turned to face the same big man who had helped him to his feet.
"Oh," said Rodney, "I suppose"-his smile was disparaging-"that you're a real good Southern Democrat, a real 100 per cent American."
"None o' your hp, bud. An' I'm tellin' you now if yuh know what's good fer yuh yuh'd better get goin'..."
The man looked mean as hell. But Rodney was too drunk to be totally intimidated as he said, "Well, mister, you may be a 100 per cent American but I'm a 200 per cent American. And so you better be careful how you talk to me"
"Oh, yeah...!" The man's eyes were no longer slits, but they were still extremely narrow. "Oh, yeah? he repeated, "whadeya mean, you're 200 per cent American?"
"Well," said Rodney, enjoying the fact that a number of people had turned from the bar to listen to them, "you people down here in the South hate the niggers and you hate the Catholics and you hate the Jews and you call yourselves 100 per cent Americans. But I'm a 200 per cent American because I hate everybody."
Although there was some laughter to the right and left of Rodney, there wasn't the faintest suggestion of a smile on the big man's face as his eyes became slits again and he said, "Get goin' bud, before I kick yuh out o' here..."
"Who do you think you are?"
"I'll show yuh who I am, snotface."
It was as if-"Lay off!"-a meat crusher had closed around his shoulder...
"Why, Rodney!"
"Hello, Pocahontas!" he exclaimed, but weakly, as the hand let go of his shoulders and, "Friend o' yours, Fortune?" the man said.
"Yes, Butch, you just let him alone."
"O.K. O.K.,"-the big man was a capsized leviathan-"I'm sorry, bud," he said with astounding meekness, a hang-dog expression on his face, "any friend"-he held out his hand-"o' Fortune's a friend o' mine..."
Hesitantly, Rodney took the big man's hand. Instead of saying "Ouch!" he said "O.K." and turned to look at Fortune who was standing there beside him saying, "Rodney baby, where have you been? The body looks as if it needs to be cleaned and pressed."
"What," he said with deliberate ingratitude, "are you doing here?"
"Couldn't sleep, baby..."
His body was a beach from which waves of drunkenness subsided as he looked at her face, half-turned from his, and although all at once he knew why she couldn't sleep, he nevertheless asked, "Why not?"
"You know," she said, looking at him, looking away, looking down.
"Not because of me?" he said, scarcely able to conceal the elation that he felt.
There was no response from her except for the fluttering of her eyelashes, the quivering of her mouth and a spasmic shiver that seemed to go from her teeth to her toes. Then she stood very still, staring straight ahead of her. It was as if she were trying to exaggerate the enigmatic expression on her face. But now, suddenly, with an agitated toss of her head, she turned to him. Sportively, brightly, she said, "Rodney, you look as if you've been taking Tour Thirteen."
"What's Tour Thirteen?"
"Oh,"-clumsily, all her fingers seeming to be thumbs, she straightened his necktie for him-"that's the one that the visiting firemen take."
"Listen, kid," he said, swaying a little, almost falling against her, "I'm no visiting fireman. I don't want any blow jobs from anyone in this town except ... Nice lips you have, little Red Riding Hood."
"All the better to eat you with, my dear," said Fortune, laughing, and pushed him away from her.
"O.K." he said, levity still in his voice, but his eyes turning serious, "Let's go. Let's go somewhere where you can eat me and I can eat you..."
He leaned very far forward, his lips almost brushing her chin, but she only laughed again, though her eyes, looked troubled, as she said, "Speaking of eating, where did you have dinner?"
"That's right,"-quietly, puzzledly, wrinkling his forehead, he stood straight again-"I didn't have dinner," he said as if to himself, and now, watching her as she picked at some caked mud that clung to one of his sleeves, he felt ravenously hungry.
"What, baby? You didn't eat? Well, we must see to that toot sweet."
As in Hennessey's a few hours before, so now she took him by the arm and led him to a table at the back of the room where (it was less crowded, less noisy, here) she said to the waiter, "Julio, bring us a great big thick rare juicy steak," to which Rodney added, "And a Canadian Club and soda for me"-he looked at her across the small square table-"what'll you have, Fortune?"
"The same."
"Very good, Mrs. Oviedo."
"So, Mrs. Oviedo," said Rodney as the waiter went away, "Where's Mr. Oviedo?" "Asleep..."
"In more than a literal sense, I gather..."
A look of slight annoyance replaced the beginning of a smile as, avoiding his eyes, she threw open the trench coat that she was wearing and tilted back her chair.
"Be careful," he said, his voice choked up at what he could only think of as the magnificent peach-bloom sight of her.
She had changed her clothes. She was wearing a sweater and slacks. The shape of her breasts was sharply outlined, even to the tips of them, as was the prominent, almost mannish, formation of her ribs. Placing his elbows on the table, he leaned towards her, remembering, remembering ... They weren't really so big. For more than five minutes they sat there as, among other things, he remembered how she used to like him to fuck her between her tits, how she'd squeeze them against his cock as he did this, how, when he came, her head would dive forward and her hands would move from her tits to clutch at his cock and hold it very tight. He could see his hot sperm spurt up her neck, over her chin, onto her lips. He could see her licking it up now, hungrily, madly, then taking his cock in her mouth to drain the last drop of come from it, to bury it deep in her throat as it went soft. And now...
His cock was hard, as hard as it could be, as, "You're not sore, are you, darling?" he said, feeling that their silence had become strained and that maybe she was angry with him.
"No." She seemed to bear down hard on the chair as she sat straight again, took out two cigarettes, put them to her lips and lit them. "No," she said, still not looking at him, handing him one of the cigarettes, "I'm not sore."
"Well...?"
"Listen, baby," she said nervously, "you'd better get out of town ... Oh! Oh that's quick work, Julio. You're sure it's rare?"
"Yes, Mrs. Oviedo," the waiter said, "just the way you like it. Blood rare."
Blood rare, blood rare, Rodney thought, but his hard-on had gone down...
"And the way you like it," Fortune said, her eyes finally meeting Rodney's, "It's not for me, Julio, it's for ... that's right, put it down there and..."
For the next few minutes she watched him eat, with a motherliness that had something masculine about it, making all the bright small talk in the world, saying, "We'll talk about that later, baby, we'll talk about that later," whenever he tried to bring her around to the subject of Oviedo and herself, to the subject of what was now, although neither of them had said a word to each other about it, the subject of Oviedo and Rodney West and herself.
He ate rapidly, each mouthful of steak and French fried potatoes seeming to make him more hungry and even-it was strange-more drunk. Then, wiping his lips with his napkin, drinking off the last of the whisky and soda, he looked directly at her and felt as if it had been years (instead of only yesterday, in Nashville) that he'd been to bed with a woman. For that matter, it had been. Yes, except for Olivia, which of any of them could compare to Fortune? He belched. " 'scuse me," he said, thinking of how it would have the added fillip of long separation, of rediscovery, of...
His cock-he put his hand to it:-was hard. The corded muscles of his throat were tense and tight, the words came out hoarsely as he said, "How about coming over to the hotel with me now?"
For an instant the strong-cut features of her face seemed to melt one into the other. She opened her mouth as if to bite into something. But then, coldly, she looked at him and said, "So that's all you want?"
"No," he said, looking down, taking his hand from his softening cock, "No!" he protested, knowing all the while that his protestation was essentially false.
"Well, even if it were and I'm not so sure, you bastard, that it isn't"-her words were edged with laughter-"I couldn't go with you now. Even though I want to, want to"-all the laughter was gone from her voice-"I've got"-she stood up. A fork, a spoon, a knife, fell to the floor-"to get home now. If Fredo wakes up and I'm not there he'll..."
He stood up, too. "Waiter!"
"So long, baby, and..."
"No, wait for me, Fortune, please. I'll walk you home. Here," he said to the waiter, taking a ten dollar bill out of his wallet.
"You still have it," she said, looking at the wallet that she had given him four years before.
"Yes," he said, "I still have it," and as he said this he knew for the first time today that he wanted her more than just for tonight or for tomorrow, or for tomorrow night, or ... "Yes, I still have it," he repeated.
They stood there facing one another, seemingly oblivious to all the people who were staring at them as the waiter went away to return a couple of minutes later with the change.
"Thank you very much, sir. Good night, sir. Good night, Mrs. Oviedo."
"Here, come this way, Rodney," she said.
He followed her out of a side door into what was the strangely surprising silence of the street. He felt quite drunk again. He took her by the elbow.
"It's like San Francisco here," he murmured, feeling the wet mist all around him in the darkness.
"Yes," she said, "tonight it's like San Francisco, San Francisco, where we met," and she seemed to stumble with him as they walked along, slowly, slowly, slowly, arm in arm, saying nothing to one another, until they came to Jackson Square.
"Baby, you've got to leave me here."
They were standing opposite the Cabildo by the high iron fence that enclosed the square. Mist hid the spires of the cathedral and all the other buildings were but dim obstructions in the darkness that here and there was pierced by the faint flickering yellow light of a street lamp. like the mist, silence lay over everything. The reaches of the square seemed endless.
"No, no..."
The city seemed to be no longer all around them as he took his arm from hers and put it around her waist and put his other arm around her waist and held her very close to him.
"Darling, darling..."
They both said it as, slowly, feeling every inch of the way, his hands moved lower, lower, lower, and her hands moved from around his shoulders all the way down his back. His spine tingled. Her tongue explored his mouth. He pushed her against the fence and flattened himself against her.
"No, baby, no, no, no!"
She shoved him away from her. She stood there in the mist looking like a maenad. Her hair was wildly disheveled. Even now, in the darkness, it was shining, lustrous, golden.
His temples seemed to be throbbing, Like his cock. Blood seemed to be beating in his ears, in his balls. He took her in his arms again, ripping open her trench coat as he did so, his hands frantically feeling her all over. And as he cupped her breasts in them and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed, she gasped, "Rodney, baby, I've got to have you. I ... I..."
"I, too..."
She relaxed completely then. He buried his face in her hair. For a moment or two they stood there like this, but then she began to cry. More than that. She began to sob. And the more she cried and the more she sobbed the more his stiff cock throbbed.
"I love you," she said, "I love you, love you, love you...
"And do you still love and adore and worship the rod?"
"Oh, yes, yes, yes," she moaned.
"Have you ever worshiped another rod?"
"Oh God no! God no! There is no other rod."
She pushed him away from her to lean against the high iron fence and then, as if dazed, she went down on her knees, there on the sidewalk in front of him. Moaning a little, she put out her hand to touch his trousers where his hard cock made a big bulge.
Rodney looked up and down the street. No one was coming. Quickly, he unzipped his fly, but before he could reach into his trousers, one of her hands was already there.
"Oh, my rod, my rod, my wonderful rod!" she said.
Then the fruit of her lips enclosed its flaming red tip and, like a ravenous animal, she began to suck and suck and suck.
What the hell. This was it and this was all. He said, "Come to Mexico with me."
At the word "Mexico" she pulled her mouth away from his cock. At the word "me" she jumped up and shoved him away from her more violently than she had shoved him away from her before.
"No," she sobbed, "No, no! Fredo will follow us to Mexico. He knows everyone in Mexico. He'll find us. He'll kill us both."
His cock began to droop. He put it in his trousers (God damn it all, why had he said anything just then?) What should he say now? He said, "So ... so we'll go somewhere else," and again began to put his arms around her.
"No, no!"-she moved away from him-"no, darling, it's no use. Fredo's too wonderful. He's been too good to me,"-her words were interspersed with sobs-"he needs me more than you do. You don't really love me, Rodney..."
"Sure I do..."
"No, no!"-she moved farther away from him-"you'd better"-she began to run down the street-"go away, go away..."
"Wait, wait!" he cried, running after her.
It was wild. It was wild and wonderful, chasing gold in the darkness, chasing gold in the mist ... But "Go away!" she screamed at him now, her voice becoming unnaturally shrill, "go away and never, never come back!"
He stopped running. He nearly fell to the ground. It was as if he had been struck across the face with a stick of steel. He staggered. Everything seemed to be whirling around him. It was a terrifying dream. He was sinking in a sea of mist. He was drowning to death in this stone-dank ocean of night, in this unearthly hollow of silence. The mist, the mist ... It was enveloping him, eating into his bones, his flesh, dissolving the structure of his mind, wiping out all thought, all memory ... He reached out, his fingers clutching, took a last desperate and despairing hold of what he recognized to be one of the spear-like rods of the iron fence that framed the mist-hidden spaces of the square.
Black, black, black ... It must be midnight. Black, black, black ... Through the long winding corridor of night the wind is whistling, whistling like a lunatic.
The wind of memory. I cannot hear it.
For how long-black, black, black-he remained there, hanging onto the fence, he did not know. For how long-but it must be midnight-be swayed there, muttered there, like a blind man, like a cripple, like an imbecile, he neither knew nor cared. Gradually, however, his muttering began to be expressive of more than unutterable misery...
So ... so Oviedo would have the comfort and the warmth of her tonight. Always, always, it would be Oviedo or someone else, and he would be left, like a poisonous plant, to rot away in some stagnant swamp, fetid, mouldering, infecting everything around him. Should he end this rotten, corrupt, cancerous condition now? Should he show some strength at last? And go down the street? And get her? And take her away with him?
He stood up straight, but then, swaying, holding onto the fence again, seeing Oviedo's face, Oviedo's eyes, he hung his head. He wouldn't risk it. He couldn't. He was too afraid to die...
To die ... Someday he would have to. Harrowing. He began to shake, to sweat.
"Death is lesse to be feared than nothing, if there were anything lesse than nothing." Was that, Montaigne, supposed to have been a consolation of some kind? Or: "The deadest deaths are the best"? Or: "...Death is a parte of your selves..."?
He shook some more and sweat some more and hung on hard to the fence, appalled by the prospect of his ultimate obliteration. Then, trying to control the chattering of his teeth, he said aloud, "Better Francis than you, Michel," and, at the behest of Bacon, he reached into his fly, which was still unzipped, and took hold of his long limp cock, for "there is no passion in the mind of man so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death."
Still-he rubbed his soft cock, rubbed it hard, as he'd done when he'd been little-could this be called a passion? Was he not, like people who died by fire, merely reverting to infantile pleasure? He took his hand away from his cock. He zipped up his fly. He took his other hand away from the fence. He turned around.
Peering through the mist, he saw that he was facing the Cathedral. Straightening himself, he lurched past it and past the Presbytere. He must find her house. He must, he must. Maybe...
He crossed St. Ann Street and continued on up Chartres. And while he looked for her house in the empty street he saw eyes in other streets and other cities, eyes that tried to peer. Lighted shutters ... But there were no shutters lighted in these houses. The wet mist was too thick. It also hid the street lamp that he now came to, a lamp that told of no o'clock, that told of nothing. Where was the house that he had gone to this morning? Then, through an opening in the waves of mist, he saw it. He stopped walking. Thin streaks of light were coming through the cracks between the blinds.
He began to tremble. In his shaking hand he held no dead geranium, but the street lamp beat like a drum of doom, beating, beating, dully beating above the sick gray silence of a battlefield that was strewn with the bodies of opposing forces, the broken corpses of memory and desire, each beat of the awful drum bringing back to him the terrible hurts, the wrongs, the outrages that he had done to himself through his own weakness, through his fatal inability to come to any kind of a decision. Drawn to the deep stewing cauldron of vice, drawn to the shallow opalescent bowl of virtue, he would, after dipping lightly into both of them, reject them both, lay down the stained rusty ladle of speculative curiosity to turn away wearily and experiment in ways that were neither careful nor calculated. Drawn to home, drawn to the wilderness, he would flee from the country to the city, from the city to the country. Drawn to this woman, drawn to that, he would go from one to the other and abandon them both.
He sighed a sigh that was almost a sob. Then, no longer trembling, he stood motionless. He stared up at the closed blinds. What was taking place behind them? Asking himself this, he knew that it was indecision more than cowardice that held him in this kind of cataleptic trance. Was he jealous of Oviedo? No. He was jealous of everyone. Coldly. With a coldness that even frightened him. Oh, how many times had the knowledge of a woman's past driven him to exceed what he could only think of as her excess? (in him they were never excesses.) Yes it was the serpent's venomous bite, the adder's sting, "the last twist of the knife," this jealousy, this warped, poisonous, envy. More than need, more than desire, it goaded him on, on and on and on, from one weird whirling waltz, one dreadful dervish-like dance, to another.
Still staring at the house, he now began to imagine her in the arms of Oviedo. He saw the tiny nipples of her small firm breasts. He saw their tender pinkness being sucked to hardness by the Mexican's black lips. And now he saw her wonderful mouth, the ripe fruit that had drawn the juice out of his cock so many times, as it almost had tonight. He saw that mouth, that tickling tongue, those luscious lips, sucking the cock of the black Mexican.
He didn't think so, but was Oviedo's cock bigger than his? She didn't like it more, that he knew, but did it go as far up into the tight wet darkness of her lovely silk-fringed cunt? Had he ever stuck it up her ass, up, up, breaking through the tight dry rosebud that lay between those smooth white mounds of flesh? Had Oviedo ever rubbed his hairy balls all over the fine contours of her face and then shot his sperm, hot, white, into the cool gold strands of her hair? Oh, my God, my God!
He turned. Which way? Which way? Which way in this cold mist, which way through these strange, these narrow, streets, was the way back to his hotel? He'd leave New Orleans tonight. He had to get out of here ... He began to run. He began to run back to Jackson Square.
He stopped running when he came to the corner of Chartres and St. Ann. Which way? Which way?
"Change yoh min', honey?"
Startled, he turned. He was out of breath. His heart was beating hard. Who? What? Oh ... Oh, good! It was the little colored whore whom he had encountered earlier that evening. Her purse was shining in the mist. So were her teeth.
He was silent. Then he said, "Yeah I've changed my mind."
"Den you jes follow Johnnie-Mae."
"Why do I have to follow you?"
"Oh, yoh f'um up No'th, aint'cha, honey?"
"Yeah."
He was puzzled. He saw her cower as the sound of footsteps came from the other side of the street.
"Well, honey," she said as she slunk against the wall of the building behind them, "down heah it ain't good sense walkin' down deh street wid a colored gal..."
"I see," he said, "but I don't care."
"But Ah do,"-her voice was a stringy singsong-"so," she said, "you jes betteh follow me. T'aint far tuh go..."
"O.K."
The girl had crossed Chartres Street. She was standing on the opposite corner, looking back at him. The poor little thing ... But this only made him more fiercely aware of what he was going to make her do to him and to herself. Oh, he would have to defile himself, revile himself, tonight! In ways most vile defile himself ... He began to cross the street.
"It's jes a little ways f'um heah, honey."
She turned and began to walk up St. Ann Street. Her steps were shuffling, yet quick and light.
He trailed after her through the penetrating dampness of the mist, his eyes fixed on the touching slenderness of her diminutive figure, on the way her skirt seemed to be fastened together with safety pins, seemed to be pulled in very tight intentionally, so that the wobble of her ass would be more pronounced above the spindliness of her straight legs, thin like clothespins. He breathed heavily as he watched the fleshy muscularity of the movement. Unamused, he watched her heels shp in and out of her shoes as she clomped along. He'd make her keep her shoes on ... He'd...
On, on, clomperty-clomp, clomperty-clomp, through the dark dank night, along St. Ann Street in New Orleans, in Louisiana, in ... He began to feel foohsh. She seemed to guess this, for she now stopped walking. She turned around. Her teeth gleamed. She sang back at him, "Jes a little ways mo', jes a little ways mo'..."
On, on ... He began to feel as if he'd been following her all his life. Why not? They were two human beings. A man. A woman. They could be mated as well as any two others ... He wouldn't make her keep her shoes on ... He'd ... But she was nowhere in sight. He walked on for a step or two and stopped.
"Heah Ah is, honey."
Yes, there she was. Just ahead of him. She was standing in a dark opening between two buildings. Going closer, he saw that it was the entrance to an alley.
"Johnnie-Mae's sho' gonna show you a fine time," she said now as she took his hand-her hand was soft and small; it felt clammy-and led him after her into the narrow pitch-black space.
Black, black, black ... He became very afraid. He snatched his hand away from hers. Was this an ambush of some kind? He stumbled, tipping over something that fell noisily to the hard-packed dirt of the alley floor. It must have been a garbage pail. The odor sickened him. He stumbled again. He staggered against one of the walls. The bricks were damp and cold.
"Whassa matta' wid you honey?"
Her voice sounded impatient. It was less melodious as she came up close to him now, so close that he could feel the rise of her little breasts through the sweater that rubbed against him. His jacket was unbuttoned. He could feel the tiny bulb-like breasts just above his belt buckle pressing into the thin material of his shirt, into the skin above his navel. His fear left him, but when she put one of her hands to his trousers and unzipped his fly to lightly scratch the hair above his cock he didn't get a hard-on. Nor did he get hard when her cool moist hand reached down to grasp his balls. She played with them for a few seconds, then lightly stroked his cock. He looked down at her and pulled away.
"Guess I had too much to drink tonight," he said.
"Oh, tha's it." Her teeth were a white gash that cut her small flat nose from her small round chin. "Well," she said, taking him by the hand again, "you jes come along wid Johnnie-Mae an' you'll feel fine..."
Feel fine, feel fine, feel fine ... The alley widened. Some lemony light shone through the jagged tear in a shade that covered a window. A creaking sound, the creak of bedsprings, came from behind a door. A voice as if from faraway cried out, "Yoh sho' can fuck, big boy, yoh sho' can fuck!"
Johnnie-Mae giggled. She let go of his hand. Through his trousers, she touched his cock. Then she rubbed it and rubbed it while she said, "An' Ah'll bet yoh sho' can fuck, honey, Ah'll bet yoh sho' can fuck."
"When I feel like it."
"Ah'll make you feel like it," she said, "Ah'll make you feel like it. Ah'll suck that beautiful big thing of yo's. Ah'll suck that beautiful big thing of yo's till it gets so big it hurts."
He began to get hard. She let go of him and said, "Come on, honey, come on, come on..."
She puUed him after her, then, letting go, she said, "Heah, honey. Heah we is."
He looked down to see her fumbling in her purse. Suddenly she seemed to be an inch or two taUer as she unlocked the door of one of the shacks that fined the alley.
"Watch yo' step, honey," she said, reaching back for his hand.
He stepped onto the wooden stoop and followed her into a darker darkness. Again she let go of his hand. He heard the clompety clomp of her high-heel shoes on the wooden boards of the floor, then saw the blue flame of a match and, in another moment, the first flare of light from a kerosene lamp. Quickly, it became a sulphury glow, illuminating the crib-shaped room where a bed that seemed to be no more than a mattress occupied one corner and a flowery papered screen seemed to conceal something in another. The lamp sat on a straight-backed chair between them. A bright thin strip of linoleum lay on the floor next to the bed. " 'scuse me, honey."
He moved to one side, letting her get behind him to bolt the door from within. He watched her pull a dark green shade over the cracked pane of a window. Then, ahead of her, he walked the few steps across the room to where the screen was spread out and looked behind it to see a battered washstand that held a chipped bowl and a pitcher with a broken handle. On the floor side the stand was a tin slop bucket. There was another window-it was open-in this corner of the room.
"Don' you all worry yo' head, honey. No one's hidin' heah. Johnnie-Mae neveh plays no tricks."
He faced about. He smiled at her. He reached into his pocket. He took out some coins. He began to jingle them in the palm of one of his hands.
For a second her cream-in-coffee colored face-it was prettier than he had expected it to be-became the color of cocoa. She shook her frail shoulders with an air of having been insulted. She tossed her head so that the jetty shine of her hair almost came unkinked where it curled around her ears. Then, in an offended tone of voice, she said, "Ah's no funky butt, honey. Ah gets a dollah!"
"Oh, sure, sure, sure," he said.
Putting the coins back into his pocket, he reached for his wallet. He took out a dollar bill and handed it to her.
Her dark red lips, puffy, pouting, parted in a smile that showed all the tuskiness of her teeth. She took the dollar and stuffed it into her purse.
"Thank yuh, honey, thank yuh, kin'ly..."
Saying nothing, he went over to the bed, looked down at the faded purple spread that covered it, shrugged his shoulders, lowered himself to what seemed to be the floor placed his head upon the pillow and stretched out.
"Ah'll be right with yah, honey..."
Her voice came from behind the screen. He could hear the sloshing of water, then little spirtles of it, as he looked up at the unpainted wood of the ceiling, the unpainted wood of the walls, and detected, cutting through the stale chilly smell of the room, the sharp aseptic odor of potassium permanganate. So she probably kept herself clean...
The light from the oil lamp flickered, creating an illusion of silent bats beating their wings against the walls of the room. Above the foot of the bed, high up in the shadows, was a spider's web so huge that it seemed to him to have moving tentacles. He closed his eyes. So here he was again. In still another place of ... Pleasure?
"Ain't you ah gonna get yo'self undressed, honey?"
Opening his eyes, he saw her standing there beside the bed. He couldn't answer her. He was too astounded by the boyish beauty of her nakedness. The flickering light of the lamp made little ripples, shadowy, black-brown and beige, run up and down the seemingly attenuated littleness of her body. Her skin seemed to be tightly stretched over her macilent ribs. Even her little breasts were hard and high. She was like a young reed. But there was something feline about her, too. Her dusky thighs made but the slightest, leanest, almost cunning, movement...
He avoided looking at her face. It didn't please him as much as her body did, but he said nothing, even to himself, and just let her move him about at will, assisting her as little as possible. She began to pull down his pants.
"Honey, yo's gotta take yo' pants off..."
He still said nothing, only lifted himself ever so slightly. But now he looked at her face as she pulled his pants off, took his shoes off, and his socks. He looked at her and looked at her. She put out her tongue to lick his legs, up, up, all the way to the edge of his white linen shorts where the hardness of his cock was making a great bulge.
She stopped kicking his legs. She sat astride his knees again. The black mound of her cunt was very black against the whiteness of his shorts.
"Ah likes yuh, honey, Ah really does..."
She undid his tie and unbuttoned his shirt. She got them off. He lay there naked except for his shorts. She ran her hands over his chest, then put one of them down below to grab his cock and hold it very tight.
"Oh, you's gotta big one, honey, yo' sho' has gotta big one."
Saying this, she let go of his cock and, in one deft movement, pulled his shorts below his knees, down his legs, over his feet and off him. She sat at his feet. She looked at him with burning eyes. Then she sprang forward, her mouth hanging open. She hesitated. He lay there, watching.
"You want me to suck? You want me to suck yuh, honey?"
"You want to?"
"Yeah," she moaned, "yeah, honey, ah sho' does."
"Go ahead."
In a flash her big white teeth were clamped around the red swollen tip of his cock. "You're hurting me."
She opened her mouth. She looked at him with mournful eyes. Then, moaning again, she stuck her tongue out and began to lick the close crop of hair on the lower part of his belly. His cock lay across her face, swollen and hard. She stopped hcking his belly. Then she began to spit on his balls and lick them and spit on them and lick them again.
For a minute or two he let her spit and lick and lick and spit, then turned over to feel her tongue go up the hole of his ass. He felt her tongue dart in, dart out. He let her do this for awhile. Then he pushed his ass ah the way up into her face and knocked her over. He reached for her shoulders. He pulled her down to him. He mounted her and "Oh, honey, honey," she groaned as, silently, violently, he stuck his cock up into her as far as it would go.
In books (even the ones he wanted to write) it would read differently. He would be riding a gigantic wave to heavenly oblivion. He would be drenched in a downpour of sweet nothingness. He would be held within the petals of a lotus. He would be doing this, be doing that. But he would never be fucking her as he was fucking her right now, putting his cock in, pulling it out, keeping it in there and grinding away until...
"Honey, honey, honey..."
...it was nothingness, but not sweet nothingness as he lay there prone, feeling the clamming sweat of her cold skin next to his own. And again his body was a beach. But this time, instead of subsiding, waves of drunkenness crashed upon it and a sour smell of stale ruttiness, engulfed him. Dizzily, almost retching, his eyes only half open, he let his soft cock fall out of her and sat up to stare at the bright flowered pattern of the screen.
"Whatch o' name, honey?"
So she must go for him ... All at once he vaguely remembered something. Less disgusted, he looked down at her. She looked starved to him. Emaciated. A victim.
"Just call me Mister Man," he said softly, looking away again, staring at the screen again, now remembering very vividly what he had only vaguely remembered a moment or two before.
It was part of Circus Parade, by Jim Tully, a book that he had read during his boyhood. In it a little colored virgin had been raped by a white circus hand and then had been forced by him to submit to a couple of dozen other men while he stood, outside the tent and collected a dollar from each one of them. She had called her seducer "Mister Man." And when the circus left town she had run after the train, had run right down the tracks after it screaming, "Oh, Mist-eh Man, oh Mist-eh, Man, oh Mist-eh Man!"
"Yes, just call me Mister Man," he said as he looked into Johnnie-Mae's luminous eyes, "Yes, just call me Mister Man and ... and stop your giggling.'
He bent over her. He slapped her across the face with his necktie. She seemed to catch her breath in the middle of a giggle. The laughter left her eyes. She simply lay there, open-mouthed, her expression one of mixed bewilderment and fear. Even her hard little high little breasts seemed to have shrunk. She looked even more meagre, more poverty stricken, more of a victim. His look of annoyance changed to a look of anger. He got up from the bed. All of his drunkenness seemed to have come back to him. He swayed several times. Then, almost toppling over, he put on his white linen shorts, his gray flannel slacks, and as he zipped up his fly he looked at her and said, "Do you want to make five dollars?"
"Sho!"-she sat up straight. Her little breasts bobbed up and down-"sho' Ah do, honey," she said, "but"-her voice was subservient (she seemed to be wanting to placate him)-"you all can stay wid Johnnie-Mae all night fo' two dol-lahs."
He began to take pity. He almost smiled. But then, brusquely, with something of a sneer, he said, "I don't want to stay with you all night. What I want you to do is go out and get another man-a white man-and bring him back here so that I can watch you do it with him."
"Ah won' do it,"-she stood up, anger making her face more animal-like-"Johnnie-Mae neveh plays dem kin' o' tricks!" She stood there on the thin strip of linoleum, holding her frail arms akimbo. "Ah's s'prised at you honey," she said.
Threateningly, he approached her. Cringing, she fell back on the bed. He took out his wallet, took a five dollar bill out of it. "Here," he said, waving it in front of her, "you can have this now and when you're finished with the other guy I'll give you another five. And if you put on a real good show I'll give you ten."
She edged away from him. She crouched close to the wall. But as he took the five dollar bill and stretched it, stiffening it between his fingers, she crept back across the disordered faded purple of the coverlet, her eyes seeming to be fixed on the face of Abraham Lincoln in the centre of the bill. Leaning far over the bed, holding the greenback out to her temptingly, he watched her closely as one of her hands-it seemed to be independent of the rest of her-reached up to tentatively touch the money.
"Go on, take it," he said.
As if it were only to obey him, her fingers closed around the bill, compliantly.
"Come on now, get dressed."
Submissively, her head bowed, she rose to her feet clutching the crumpled strip of currency in one of her hands. Again he began to take pity. She seemed to have been beaten to this humbleness. But then he said, "Hurry up! I haven't got all night."
Her head still bowed, she said in a voice that was no more than a whisper, "How you all gonna watch in dis place?"
"I'll stand behind the screen," he said, "and ... and I'll move the lamp over in the corner there so he won't see me."
"Mist-eh Man, Ah sho's surprised at you."
"Never mind being surprised." His words came out thick and harsh. "The world's full of funny people, Johnnie-Mae. You ought to know that..."
"Yeah, honey, but..."
Her hands reached out appeahngly, as if to ask his pardon for something or other, as if to ask him to change his mind.
"Come on"-he bit his lip. He stared down at the floor-"cut it. Just get dressed and get going..."
"All right, honey"-her voice was very high up and very far away-"but Ah ain't doin' it jes fo' duh money. Ah really likes yuh, honey, 'deed Ah do..."
"Go on, get dressed, damn you," he said, his voice becoming choked (should he let her off? Should he teach her to worship the rod, instead? No. It took time to break them in, and this was only a whore, a whore he'd never see again). "Go on, get dressed," he repeated.
Still staring at the floor, he watched her flat brown feet pad across the bare boards and disappear behind the screen. Then, as he again heard the slop and slosh of water, he turned to pick up the lamp and carry it over to the corner of the room nearest to the foot of the bed.
"Hurry up," he called to her as he set the lamp down.
In a few moments she came out from behind the screen, pulling her sweater over her head. She didn't say anything, but went behind the screen again to, in another few moments, emerge fastening her skirt. And then, as he stood there looking at her, she slipped her small feet into the overlarge shoes and picked up her purse from the chair where she had laid it earlier. Putting the five dollars which she still held in her hand into it, she took out a lipstick.
"Never mind that," he said, "it's dark outside. And so are you. Just pick up the first white man you can and bring him back here. If he doesn't want to come tell him you'll do it for nothing..."
It was confounding to him how cold, how cruel, his voice could sound. Guiltily, he turned his back on her as, again, she stretched out her hands to him and raised her eyebrows in pitifully bewildered wonderment.
"Hurry up," he forced himself to say now as he heard her high-heel shoes slowly, sadly, clompety-clomp to the door.
"Make sho," he heard her say, "that he don't see you. You all had betteh be very quiet, Mist-eh Man..."
"Don't you worry about that," he said, "just hurry up back..."
Clompety'-clomp ... He didn't turn around until he heard the door close behind her, until-clomp, clomp-he heard her descend the steps of the stoop. Then, facing the door, seeming to see her outside there in the alley, he said aloud, "What was it that you wrote about yourself Montaigne? Oh yes. 'I have never seen a greater monster or miracle ... than myself.'" These words, however, were small consolation to him. Yet he was able to say to himself that tomorrow they might be able to console him. Tomorrow. After the corpse of this night had been taken from the house of ... of ... His soul?
With a wavering walk, as if he were on shipboard, he went over to the chair between the bed and the screen. Feeling as he'd felt whenever he'd been slightly seasick, he sat down. He placed his elbows on his knees. Then, holding his head between his hands, he said to himself that he was no longer Rodney West, a young man who wanted to write novels. He was only "R," "R" the kidnapper, the sex maniac, as Peter Lorre had been "M." "M," the miscreant, the monstrous Minotaur ... That's who he was.
Still holding his head in his hands, pressing his fingers, pressing them hard, against his cheeks, he gazed around the room trying to associate this shadowed scurvy sordidness with all the rest of his life. But in a moment or two it seemed to him that, since puberty, his life had been nothing more than an impure bestiality, a foul diversion from, a carious anticlimax to, the Lochinvarian dreams he'd had as a boy. He looked up at the spider's web. It had become a crawling cockatrice. He looked down. He looked in the corner where he had placed the lamp. It had become a grinning lemur, a vile leprechaun. He stood up. The odor of potassium permanganate offended his nostrils. He swayed. He swayed again. Stepping behind the screen, nearly tripping over the slop bucket, he stood by the open window next to the washstand.
The fog felt cool on the back of his neck. Out there, out there, he thought, out there just behind him was a city, a country, a world, full of decent, upright citizens. All at once he wanted nothing more than to be living on a street like millions of other streets, in a house like millions of other streets, in a house like millions of other houses, with a wife like ... No, out there, out there, out there just behind him was Fortune, Fortune, Fortune. ... Oh why oh why oh why had he gone to see her?
He sta down-there was a creak beneath him-on the unpainted sill of the window. Looking into the bucket, he saw strings and clumps of black hair floating in the purplish-brown dregs at the bottom of it. He nearly fell forward. He felt like adding to this foul feculence with his vomit. But then, looking up, seeing the back of the screen in front of him, remembering why he was still here, a sense of licentiousness replaced his feeling of nausea.
He stood up and closed his eyes to become a caitiff cruelly caught in the silken cerement of a concubine. But no-his hp lengthened; his nostrils quivered-he was the caliph, the sultan, the magnificent mogul, the shah, the lordly landam-man, and gelded catamites were obsequiously hovering about him in this jewel-lighted chamber hung with lapis lazuh-trimmed tapestries of rich carnelian velvet. It was-he swayed-a lustful Bacchanalia as he, the high hippogriff, the great griffin, the Hydra-headed unicorn, the supreme satyr, the almighty adulterer of them all, prepared to offer up still another sinful sacrifice to himself. He opened his eyes. He nearly knocked over the screen. They were black orchids, green gardenias, lavender lilies, these flowers faintly outlined on this side of it. Standing on tiptoe, he looked above them and down at the mattress that was the bed. Then, standing straight again, he adjusted the screen so that-he lowered himself to the sill-he could see through the slit between two of its sections. Yes, here he would be able to see without being seen.
He began to be impatient. Why didn't she hurry up? He reached into the pocket of his jacket for a cigarette. But as he did this he heard the door of the shack swing open and...
"Heah we is, honey."
Taking his hand out of his pocket, he sat forward. Holding his breath, he put his eye to the slit in the screen. He began to sweat.
Jes le' me close the do', honey..."
The door closed, but Johnnie-Mae didn't close it. The man had brutally pushed her to one side. And then-the partition-like walls of the shack were still shaking-she went flying across the room, coins, mostly pennies, clanketing to the floor as she fell to it, the upper half of her frail body hitting the bed with a thud.
The man-all that Rodney could see of him were, oddly enough, riding boots, riding breeches, and tweed jacket-stood over her. He was about six feet tall. One of his arms was raised menacingly and now Rodney saw that in his hand he held a riding crop.
Sweat streaming down his face, Rodney could hear Johnnie-Mae whimper, "What you all wanna do that fo', honey? What you all wanna do that fo'?"
"Shut yo' goddamn face befo' Ah change it fo' yuh!"
"Oh, Mist-eh Man," she began to wail, "oh, Mist-eh Man, oh, Mist-eh Man..."
One side of her face was flat upon the bed. But Rodney, holding himself rigid, could see all of the terrified desperation in the single staring eye as it seemed to search the screen for him.
"Shut up!" the tall man shouted at her now, his Southern accent modulating the harsliness of his words, "don' you call me that, you little niggeh bitch! Mah name is Douglas! Douglas Dudley!"
The man began to fall backwards. Rodney, the muscles of his stomach contracting, drew in his breath, expecting him to fall against the screen. But then he turned around, so that Rodney could see his face.
He was young (he didn't look more than twenty-two or three years old) and he was very drunk. He had a pale even-featured face, an almost fragile build, and the expression in his gray eyes, though wild, was one of yielding despair.
"Yeah," he was saying as he raised the riding crop above his head, "this is it. If Ah do this Ah'll buy mah bond, Ah'll pay mah tax, Ah'll cast mah vote"-he ran his fingers through the crew-cut tawn of his hair-"an' then Ah'll be jes like all the millions of other murderers walkin' the streets of the world..."
For a moment Rodney was alarmed. But then, looking closely at Dudley, he realized that the guy was just another drunken Southern "intellectual." Damn it, he probably wouldn't even be able to get a hard-on. Unless, of course, he beat her, and it didn't look as if he were even going to be able to do that, for he fell limply onto the bed now and began groping for Johnnie-Mae.
Rodney sat forward, his eyes glued to the slit between the two sections of the screen.
"Yes," Dudley was saying, "Ahm' jes gonna have to kill yuh, yuh little niggeh bitch..."
Trembling, Johnnie-Mae crawled over to the wall where, flinching, she pressed her back against the boards as Dudley reached out to take her by the shoulders. Then, all the while trying to wriggle out of his grasp, she cried out, "Oh, Mist-eh Man, save Johnnie-Mae! Oh, Mist-eh Man, oh, Mist-eh Man...!"
"Shut up, you ..." Dudley grunted, pulling her down and heavily falling on top of her.
She resembled nothing so much, thought Rodney, as a fish floundering in a net as Dudley yanked at the cheap string of beads that she must have put around her neck when she had gotten dressed.
"Oh, Mist-eh Man!" she gasped.
Dudley yanked at the beads again. They broke. They sparkled over the bed. Dudley lifted himself a little. She didn't move. She lay there seeming to be completely quailed as he began to pull up her skirt.
This seemed to reassure Johnnie-Mae. Rodney could even see her smile a little.
"Tha's right, honey," she said, "tha's what we all came heah fo' ..."
Because he was so slightly built, she had little trouble in pushing Dudley off of her and shoving him to one side. Grunting, he let himself be pushed and shoved. What fight there had been in him was gone, or seemed to be. He simply lay sprawled out on the bed, his eyes closed, while Johnnie-Mae got up, her big brown eyes no longer frightened, and stood there to stare at the screen.
"Ah sho's gonna show you a fine time," she said, and Rodney could see that she was talking to him.
She began to hum a tune that Rodney recognized, "Royal Garden Blues," a real good strip tease tune, as she hummed she wriggled her hips and wriggled her shoulders and rolled her eyes. Then she kicked off one shoe, the other, and, slowly, began to unfasten her skirt, all the while humming the tune and shaking her shoulders. Her skirt unloosened, she let it slide from her undulating hips and, slowly, let it descend to her ankles.
"Yes, Ah sho' is," she said now, rolling her eyes again, all the while looking at the screen.
She stepped out of her skirt. She began to hum
"Royal Garden" again. She stuck out her tongue. She worked it in and out of her mouth. It looked like a small pink cock. She put one of her hands to her white panties, through which the black mound of hair on her cunt made a small triangle. She touched her cunt. She rolled her eyes. She slipped off her panties. Then, slowly, with a lascivious look on her face, a look that made it look savage, she raised her sweater to expose her smooth brown belly, her macilent ribs.
"Ah likes yo', honey, Ah really does," she said, saying this to the tune of "Royal Garden Blues," doing a bump and a grind, so that her hard brown ass wriggled from side to side and her black cunt jerked forward.
Continuing to make these movements-bump, grind, bump, grind-she slowly, slowly, very slowly, pulled her sweater above her bulb-like tits. Then, quickly, she pulled the sweater over her head and stood there naked. Standing straight, she took her tits in her hands and squeezed them, and then-Rodney held on to his hardening cock-she let out a yell, for Dudley had risen from the bed and, standing behind her, had slapped her hard across her ass with his riding crop.
"Niggeh bitch!"
His gray eyes glittering, Dudley now pushed her down to the floor where she lay whimpering, looking first at the screen, wildly, imploringly, then at Dudley's shiny black boots, at his whipcord breeches, at the black leather riding crop, at the hand that gripped it, at the face which stared down at her, sneering.
"Don' you all wan' me to suck yo' cock, honey?" she said now in a whining voice, trembling.
"Sho," he said, "but firs' Ah gotta take a leak," and as he said this he unzipped his fly and took out his cock, which was only slightly less dark than the pale hand that held it. Soft, it was rather small and pink-tipped.
"Ah'll getcha the bucket, honey, Ah'll getcha the bucket," said Johnnie-Mae, raising herself on her elbows, "Yo sho's gotta a nice cock. A nice one, a nice one," she said in a placating voice, trying to smile at him.
"Ah don' need no bucket," said Dudley, swaying a little, "an' keep yo' niggeh compliments to yo' self ..."
"Yes, honey," she said, "but..."
"Jus' you open yo' mouth now," said Dudley and, moving forward, he stood astride her brown body.
"No!" said Johnnie-Mae, pressing her thick lips together, pressing them together tightly.
Bending down, Dudley smacked her across the face with his riding crop. She opened her mouth and howled. As she did this, Dudley stood erect and began to pee on her.
Screaming "Mist-eh Man, oh Mist-eh Man!" Johnnie-Mae raised herself on her elbows while Dudley's colorless urine streamed down on her in one steady spurt, hosing the whole upper part of her body. It splashed on her breasts, her neck, her face, some of it going into her mouth, which she now closed tight, like her eyes, as she began to struggle to her feet. But Dudley, still pissing, pissing as if he'd never stop, now dug the spurs of his shiny boots into her brown thighs and held her there, pinned to the floor.
Johnnie-Mae screamed out in pain. She opened her eyes. Dudley's pale piss streamed into her mouth, into her eyes.
"Oh, Mist-eh Man, oh, Mist-eh Man!" she cried out, trying to pry herself loose from the grip of
Dudley's spurred boots, "Oh, Mist-eh Man, oh, Mist-eh Man!" she cried out again, her face wet with Dudley's urine, her body sopping with it.
"Shut yo' mouth!" said Dudley now, "an' stop callin' me that!"
As he said this, his piss streamed more slowly and now, most of it out of him, it began to drip onto her brown wet body drop by drop by drop. Looking down at her, Dudley shook his cock, shook it hard, trying to shake the last drops onto her face.
"Open yo' eyes, niggeh bitch!" he shouted now.
Johnnie-Mae just shook her head from side to side and began spitting. Her eyes were still closed. A grimace of disgust contorted her features.
"Oh!" said Dudley, "So!" said Dudley, and stepping away from her, he took her by the shoulders, seeming to wrench her head from her body as he did so. He pulled her to her feet, then threw her to the floor again.
"Oh, Mist-eh Man, oh, Mist-eh Man, oh, Mist-eh Man!" screamed Johnnie-Mae as, now, Dudley dug the heel of one of his boots into the calf of her leg and, raising the riding crop above his head, brought it down, its sharp steel tip cutting into her back. As he did this, his pale limp cock began to rise.
"Shut yo' mouth, you niggeh whore!"
Dudley's cock stiffened as he shouted this and brought the riding crop down across her trembling shoulders. Screaming, Johnnie-Mae tried to pull herself free, but now Dudley dug the heel of his boot deeper into the calf of her leg.
"Ah'll show yuh!" he shouted and, quickly, he took his boot from her leg and pulled her to her feet.
Head cast down, tears streaming through the piss that drenched her face, Johnnie-Mae, looking very small and woebegone, stood there miserably, her brown limbs shaking.
"Down on yo' knees now, niggeh bitch!" said Dudley and pushed her to the floor in front of him, so that his small stiff cock touched her shiny black hair. His cock looked very white in contrast to it. Its pink tip looked almost red.
Now Dudley backed a step away from her. His cock was touching her forehead, but Johnnie-Mae seem to notice. Still trembling, she kept looking at the floor, at her brown thighs, at his black boots.
"Now suck, suck, suck, you niggeh bitch!" yelled Dudley.
Slowly, her eyes opening wide, Johnnie-Mae raised her head and Rodney could see her stare at the pink tip of Dudley's cock with a look that was malevolent. Then, quickly, she took hold of him by his whipcord breeches and opened her mouth. Her big white teeth gleamed and so did her eyes as, now, she opened her mouth wider and bit the tip of Dudley's cock, bit it as hard as she could.
Dudley let out a yell and Rodney could see his cock soften as he grabbed Johnnie-Mae by her kinky black hair and pulled at it with all his strength. But she wouldn't let go...
Yelling now, Dudley fell forward, almost fell over her, but somehow he found the strength to raise the riding crop and, pulling himself back a little, he slashed it down on her head, hitting the back of her neck as hard as he could.
Johnnie-Mae opened her mouth to scream and Rodney thought that he saw blood on Dudley's soft cock as he pulled himself back to kick her and kick her again.
Whimpering, she began to crawl away, to the bed, but now Dudley reached down and pulled her to her feet. He slashed her across the face with his riding crop. She cried out, "Oh, Mist-eh Man!"
Then he began to beat her mercilessly, throwing her small body about at will until, at last, he had her half on the bed and half on the floor.
It seemed to Rodney that this throat was clogged with blood. There was a tightness at his temples. A warm watery film covered his eyes. Breathing heavily, pressing his hand at his hard cock which pressed at his trousers, he sat as close to the screen as he could. Dudley was beginning to...
But Rodney saw no more as...black, black, black...he felt as if he had been hit between the eyes.
Where was he? But then, lying there in the darkness on a strangely shifting surface, he realized that he had lost his balance and had fallen out of the window. Still, he wasn't on the ground...
What was all this strange smelly stuff that scratched his face? He tried to get to his hands and knees, but couldn't. His feet were buried in the cold, damp chunks of hard ... Could it be coal? Yes-he felt it moving all around him-he had fallen into a coalbin.
He began to laugh at himself. But only began. For-he looked up and saw the light coming from the window of the shack-he had to get the hell out of here fast. And now, "Oh, Mist-eh Man!" he could hear her calling in a voice that, if it weren't so thin, would have been a shriek.
As well as-"Oh, Mist-eh Man!"-he could, he-"Oh, Mist-eh Man!"-lifted himself, up, and moved-"Oh, Mist-eh Man!"-away from the window, pulling one leg, then the other, out of the coal, only to have one, then the other, buried up to the knee in it. Sweating, straining, feeling filthy, he tumbled up and down, falling to one side and the other. But gradually her cries of "Oh, Mist-eh
Man!" grew faint, then ceased altogether as he saw that he had come to a fence.
Feeling bruised, feeling as if he had been beaten, he leaned against the splintery wooden boards, letting his legs sink into the coal. The fog was even thicker now. And colder. He felt chilled and sick, utterly miserable and lost.
He looked up at the fence. It ... no, it wasn't too high. He ... he could just make it. Grunting, groaning, he put his hands over the top of it. He hoisted himself up and, "Goddamnit to hell!" he exclaimed as, ripping his pants, he lowered himself to ... Yes, it was a sidewalk.
For a few seconds he stood there, dazed. Then, seeing the light of a street lamp enveloped in mist, he tried to figure out where he could be. Not that-he hung his head-it made much difference. He might just as well-he staggered over to the lamppost-hang himself right now. He put his fingers to his belt. They moved up to his inner pocket. Yes, his wallet was still there-He jumped. What was that horrifying sound? Could it be a baby being strangled to death? Terror-stricken, he looked up to where the sound had come from. Sitting on the fence facing one another were two black cats.
4
"...and if you hadn't come to the shop this morning, baby, I don't know what I would have done."
This was the third or fourth time that she had said this, or something like this, since they'd been sitting here eating chicken papillote and drinking Zazaracs, as it was the third or fourth time that, saying nothing, he had placed his hand over hers, thinking of how much more pleasing it was to look at the back of his own hand. But now he raised his eyes to comment to himself on the loveliness of the rest of her, perfectly complementing this courtyard with its tubs of oleander, its splash of fountain pastel-tinted by the sun, its high walls hidden by the variegated green of creeping vines.
They were-he pressed her hand-ah alone in this corner of the courtyard. A tall tallow tree separated them from the rest of the people having lunch. Only a parakeet in one cage, a cockatoo in another, could observe them. He gazed up at the translucence of the sky. Was there anything in the world but this? Oh, someday he would have to write that book called The Life Of Riley, the life of Fortune Riley ...
"Darling," she said, letting her fork fall into the casserole dish of chicken papillote.
If only she weren't so jittery. Well-he still said nothing-everything would be all right once they got to Mexico. It was all settled. As soon as he'd seen her in the praline shop this morning he knew that it would be. Even before she had knocked over the gin and milk that she'd been drinking and had cried out, "Rodney, baby, I knew you'd come!"
Yes, what was the sense-he squeezed her hand-of looking further? She surpassed them all. That golden hair ... Those nectarine lips-That resolute but mobile chin ... Those big baby-blue eyes ... In her brown suit, a bright yellow kerchief at her throat, she looked like a Renoir with clothes on, a Renoir whose curves had been planed away by Braque or by Picasso ...
He took another sip of his Zazarac. He said, "Well, what about it, sweetheart? Where are we going to meet?"
"Not in this part of town, baby. And it would be a good idea if you stayed out of this part of town for the rest of the day. You see, I'll have to tell him that you left. Then he'll go to sleep. Last night he didn't sleep a wink. He was only pretending to when I went out, when I ran into you ... "
The strong planes of her face were shaded by what seemed to be shadows of distress. The quivering at the comers of her mouth began again.
"Now look, Fortune," he said, forcing firmness into his voice, "it's all settled. I know that it's going to hurt him as well as you do, and I even think I know how much you care for him. But you've got to ... "
"I know," she interrupted, "don't worry, Rodney, I won't back down. I want you more than anything in the world. And ... "-under the table her hand sought and found his cock-"and I ... Oh, darling!"
He leaned over to kiss her lightly on the cheek. Under the table his hand sought and found her cunt and through her skirt his fingers pressed at it, as through his trousers her fingers squeezed his cock.
He looked at her. Her face had no expression. And now, as she unzipped his fly, he saw that she was looking at a waiter who stood by a tub of oleander near the trunk of the tall tallow tree. Very calmly, his cock in one hand, she picked up her fork with the other and he, stretching his legs in front of him under the table, also began to eat as, slowly, steadily, rhythmically, she began to jerk him off.
With one, two, three, four, five pulls at his cock it was hard. Then, holding it tighter, squeezing it hard, still eating, she pulled at it faster.
He stopped eating. He slumped forward in his chair. He began to breathe very heavily. But then he reached under the table to grab her hand, to hold it still. She turned to look at him. Her smile was cool.
"What's the matter, darling," she said, "don't you like your chicken?"
"I sure do," he laughed huskily, "I sure do. You're my chicken, baby ... " and then they both laughed and the waiter looked at them curiously as she took her hand from his cock and he touched it, stroked it, then put it back in his trousers.
"Oh, you're wonderful, Fortune," he said, "I can't wait. I ... "
"I can't, either," she said, no longer smiling, "but ... "
"Let's go over to my hotel right now," he said, sitting straight again, his hand still on his cock, which still was hard and throbbing.
"No, my sweet," she murmured, "we must be careful. We ... "
"Yes, you're right," he said, "but tell me now, where are we going to meet?"
"How about the Roosevelt? At 2 a.m.? At the big bar?" she said. "That's as good a place as any. No one I know ever goes there."
"O.K., " he said, "that's fine. But be sure," he added a bit nervously, "to leave him that note saying that you're heading for New York."
5
By the dawn's early light he could see what so proudly he hailed a few hours before as, now, the bus skirted Lake Charles, speeding on towards Texas. She was sleeping beside him, her face white in the gray light of Friday. Her hand was still under his coat. His hand was still under hers.
Staring past her, through the dull blurred pane of the window, he looked at the large silent lake, pallid beneath the smeared sky. The unmoving water was leaden. Everything around it was colorless. The moss-bearded cypress trees were gaunt and gray. The weeping willows drooped dingily. Even the hyacinths had a lackluster look in the humid thickness of early morning vapor that etiolated the atmosphere. Here, more than anywhere that he had been, he felt the South, the deep deep South, around him.
The sound of heavy breathing seemed to blend with the greyness that was gradually outlining the heads and shoulders of all the figures in the bus. Rodney craned his neck. Only the bus driver seemed to be alive. Yet with his mechanical motions, even with the way he lit his cigarette now, he gave Rodney the impression of a robot masquerading as a man.
Rodney leaned back again. He looked at Fortune again. She, too, was breathing heavily. He shifted a little in his seat. Her hand slipped. He lifted it back to where it had been lying beneath his topcoat, her warm palm pressing against his hot cock. Her fingers moved, caressing it, scratching it a little. But she didn't wake up. She did, however, whisper something in her sleep that sounded very much to him like "Darling."
He moved closer to her and his cock hardened as their heads touched. His eyes were only half-open. All that he could see were silky strands of hair. He tried to yawn. He couldn't. The taste in his mouth was stale. Her hair was a golden veil. Oh, incroyable ... He closed his eyes. He dozed.
When he awoke it was lighter. For a second he had no idea where he was. Then he glanced at her. Her head had fallen to one side, away from him, against the window through which he now could see nothing but an interminable flat field of wheat. In the sun-shot greyness it seemed to him to be coated with ashes.
He reached into his pocket for a cigarette. As he lit it he could hear above the breathing in the bus low mumbling among several of the passengers. Letting the match fall to the floor, he turned his head towards her once more, but he didn't reach for her hand which, again, had slipped away, for suddenly he experienced a faint feeling of distaste as the pale morning sunlight revealed the wetness of sweat that had oozed from the pores of her nose.
Placing a finger in the fatty crevice between his nostril and his cheek, he wiped away the sweat from one side of his own nose, and as he did this to the other side of his nose he thought of how repellent, at close range, the human animal could sometimes be. And so he looked away from her, looked out the window and gazed up at the smoky sunshine saying to himself, "Olivia for spacious skies where are you now?"
Slumping in his seat, he stretched his legs so that they filled the aisle in front of him, as he took one drag after another on his cigarette before he disgustedly dropped it to one side where-how stiff his legs were, and his cock-he ground it out with the heel of one of his shoes. Then, putting his hand on his cock, pressing down on it hard, once more placing his head against the plush-pillowed back of the seat, he closed his eyes to deliberately devote himself to remembrance of Olivia.
Ah (he stroked his cock) she had been so lovely, so tall, so willowy. Yet (he squeezed his cock) she had been so unbending (not like his cock; he took his hand away from it), so illusive, so remote (even when she came she'd only cry out: "You! You! You! You."). He opened his eyes. He closed them again. Her hair ... It had been like light tan taffy, spun round to crown the pallor of her forehead. Her lips ... They had been so inflexible, but had possessed such sufficient fullness (sufficient, indeed, to take his cock half in her mouth while, inhumanly almost, she stared at the rest of him coldly). Her teeth ... They had been so dazzlingly bright, so straight, so perfect (as perfect as the way she would bite him sometimes, hurting, but not too much). Her slim white body ... Yes. Cranach's Eve. Which one? All. And her hands (he covered his cock with both of his) ... They had been so long, so slender, so smooth. And her faraway smile ... Aloof, intimate, all at once, it had been both as slightly, ever so slightly, she had raised her etched eyebrows above her oval-shaped eyes. Those brown eyes flecked with yellow ... Surely (Honors bright!) she, not Fortune (a look of annoyance passed over his face), had been his "girl with the golden eyes."
Only half-awake now, he drowsily half-dreamed about Europe and Olivia, about the year of 1939, which he had spent with her in Paris, London, and the South of France. It had been, for all its Continental glamour, a simple story (as most good stories are). It had been, to be both brief and blunt, a classic case of requited lust and unrequited love. But had he loved her? He liked to think so, anyway. And now, half-asleep, he remembered how she had made him go back to America, forced him to forego his natural wish to witness the event. She, of course, had stayed there ("J'habite la Krance," she had said to one and all, the stupid bitch), although he had implored her (goddamn her fatalistic hide), to come with him, to leave her native continent (ah, yes, she lad been "Miss Europe," "Miss Europe of 1939"). He could see her again on the quay at Marseilles that last day. Almost literally, she had taken him by the ear and had put him on the boat. And now, riding into the Southwest of America, into Texas, on to Mexico, he saw her as he had seen her those last few moments. He saw that last lingering smile. He saw those tears (giving her away at the last?). Without opening his eyes, he blinked. He began to climb the gangplank. He fell asleep.
When he awoke it was Fortune who was the dream. And as he squinted-glaring sunlight streamed into the bus-to full awareness of the present, his first thought (half-thought) was: Why can't I ever be satisfied with what I've got?
She seemed to be awake now. Her hair was all shades of red and gold. Making a stretching movement with his shoulders, he asked, "Where are we?"
"Bonjour, Rip van Rodney!"
Her head swung about. Her hands reached for his lapels. She planted a kiss on his lips. Fresh powder clung to his chin and to his cheeks. He laughed. So did she as she sat back again.
"Did I sleep so long?" he asked.
"It seemed like forever," she said, "but you're so beautiful, baby, when you're asleep ... "
"And so good," he laughed.
"Yes, that's just the trouble, darling. That's why it seemed forever ... "
"Well you just wait until tonight."
"Tonight, baby? I thought we were going straight through to Mexico."
"I don't feel like waiting that long," he said, "Jesus Christ, I wish,"-he glanced around the bus. The humming sound of its motor was now drowned out by the conversations going on among the passengers-"I wish," he said again, "that we were all alone right now, that ... "
"Baby, baby, baby"-her voice was like the slow flow of honey as she snuggled up to him-"I can't wait, either," she said, "it's been so long ... "
And long his cock was now, and hard, as under his topcoat she moved her hand over his trousers, up from his knee to where the tip of his cock stretched the gray flannel. Slowly, gently, she ran her hand up to his belt and then, swiftly, unzipped his fly to put her hand around his burning tool.
"Oh, my rod, my rod," she whispered and, closing her eyes, she began to massage his prick gently, not forgetting, however, to dig her nails into it, lightly, but enough to hurt him a little.
"You're hurting me," he murmured.
"I want to," she said in a low, a very low, voice, "and ... "
Before she could finish he leaned to one side and, putting a hand under her coat, he pinched the nipple of one of her breasts. Then he pinched the other one, pinched it hard, as hard as he could.
"Oh my God," she murmured and pulled his cock out of his trousers.
She squeezed his cock so tight that he thought the tip of it would burst. Then, loosening her hold a little, she began to jerk him off. He let her do this for almost a minute, but then he whispered, "Don't Fortune, don't. Not now. Not here. Besides,"-he moved away from her-"I want to save it all for you. I ... "
"Yes," she said, and released her hold on his cock which, as best as he could (it was burning hot and stiff), he put back in his trousers.
For the next few moments they said nothing, but their hands still moved ah over another as, slumping far down in the connecting seats, they kissed. Then he said, "Lordie, but it's hot in here."
"Take your coat off, darling."
She sat up to help him remove his topcoat. Groaning a little, feeling stiff and sore, he arose from his seat and stepped into the aisle, not giving a damn whether anyone saw that he still had a hard-on. He threw the coat onto the rack that held their suitcases. Then, sitting down again, he looked out of the half-open window to see an endless expanse of sagebrush and cactus that, beneath the blazing sunshine, seemed to be in a state of petrification. In the distance he could just make out a small oasis of green where what seemed to be cattle seemed to be peacefully grazing. He sighed. He touched his trousers. His cock was only half hard now.
"Where are we?" he asked again.
"We're about an hour away from Beaumont."
"Well," he said, "New Orleans is safely behind us. New Orleans and ... "
"Fredo," she said in a tone of voice that neither completed his sentence nor said anything else.
"What's the matter?" he asked, for there was a twitching in her cheeks as she stared down at her coat which now lay unevenly folded in her lap.
"What do you think?" she murmured almost inaudibly. "Do you think that if s been easy?"
"No ... look, baby," he said, his voice becoming a trifle harsh, "this has got to be a clean break with him or it's no good."
"I know," she said, her head still lowered, "but listen, Rodney," she looked up. One of her hands took hold of one of his. "I'm worried, so worried, about him. You don't know Fredo. He could kill himself."
Thinking that that would be a fine solution, he said, "Well ... ? "
"Well I've got to telephone him when we get to Beaumont."
"Then he'll be able to trace the call. He'll know that we're not heading for New York."
"I don't care. I've got to call him."
He said nothing to her, for there was absolutely nothing that he could say. Anyway, she didn't at all look as if she would hear him. No matter what-she had lowered her head again-he said. So-he stared out of the window-here he was "where the sun beats, and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and"-his fixed stare met the glare-"the dry stone no sound of water." Here-"this is the dead land"-he would die. Here-"this is the cactus land"-Oviedo would find him, would kill him. Sweat dampened his trouser legs. His shirt stuck to his skin. Sweat seemed to break through every pore in his face. He sat forward. He must get out of this.
"Fortune," he said, in a too-loud voice, "you've got to go back to New Orleans!"
He glanced at her now. She was still looking into her lap. He frowned. Then, in a voice that was a little less loud, he said, "Didn't you hear me?"
Her hair flew from one side to the other. Her mouth was quivering. So was her chin. But her eyes were still turned away from him as, breathlessly, she said, "Yes, Rodney, I heard you, but"-with a convulsive gesture she took hold of his knee as, at last, she looked at him-"but ... but I don't want to go back to New Orleans. I don't, I don't, I don't ... "
Her words, low liquid smooth, seemed, instead of coming out of her mouth, to be sliding down into her throat. Her fingers continued to convulsively caress his knee and the bony part of the upper part of his leg. Weakly, wanting her more than ever, he looked into her eyes which were, he thought, a little bloodshot, and again he noticed the faint lines at the corners of them. He wondered, had her body changed at all? He cleared his throat. He said, "But-but it's no good, darling. Not this way. If-if you call him in Beaumont ... "
"I've got to do that."
"Well then,"-he made a nervous helpless movement with his hands-"he'll be after us in no time."
She said nothing. She seemed to be completely discomposed. But her fingers were now caressing his knee less convulsively. Slowly, ever more slowly, they seemed to knead the cloth of his trousers as, hanging her head, she finally murmured, "Oh, what in the hell can I do?"
He was silent. All that he could think of was the , murder that would be committed by Alfredo Oviedo. He could almost hear the ticking of the minute hand that was ticking his life away. His stomach was an empty oyster shell. The sweat on his face was cold. He was relaxed and rigid all at once. He could feel himself, his cock, becoming nothing. But suddenly he was jolted back to the movement of his muscles, to the beating of his heart, by the clasp of Fortune's arms around him as, her face just below his, she looked up at him saying, "It's you I'm thinking about, darling. It's you, not Fredo. If anything were to happen to you because of me ... Oh, darling!"-she dug her fingers into the muscles of his arms-"you're my baby boy, don't you know that? I've got to watch out for you, I've ... "
He moved his shoulders so that she was forced to release his arms. Apprehensively, he glanced around the bus to see if anyone had seen or heard. No. So he could look at her again-she had moved back to one side of him-and say to himself that she was the one person in the world who didn't care if he were weak, were cowardly. Somehow she made his weaknesses less hateful to him. Somehow she made it seem that his acts of cowardice were justifiable. Oh, she was wonderful! He never had to hide a thing from her! He was her baby! She was his ... No, she was not!
Clenching his fists, unclenching them, clenching them again, he tried to control his feeling of mixed resentment and desire, but he could only bring the resentment under control as he thought of how her arms could be around him tonight, of how her big hands could be caressing him (and punching him), of how her wet lips, her wet tongue, could be licking him all over (his chest, his legs, his cock, his balls, his ass), of how her golden cunt could be holding his hard brown cock, holding it, clutching it, tight. And now he could feel it getting hard again, but, unclenching his fists and looking down at his hands, he said quite calmly, "I'll tell you what"-he looked up at her-"I ... "-he hesitated again-"and yes, you should call him. But"-his mind was working fast now; everything was falling properly, precisely, into place-"but," he said, "tell him that you're on your way back. Then we can go on to Houston and spend the night."
"Then what?"
"Then," he said with a fine show of determination, "you'll go back to New Orleans and ... " "So I'm just another one night stand to you!"
"No, baby," he said, taking hold of her hand, which she tried to pull away. "No, baby," he repeated, doing his best to be Mr. R.W. Tenderness. "Listen!" he exclaimed, "give me a chance, will you?"
"Well ... ? "
"Well, after you get back to New Orleans you've got to straighten things out. This time it was too sloppy. You've got to do it right next time. No leaving notes. You've got to tell him. You've got to make it clear to him that you're leaving him for me and ... "
"And ... ? "
"And then you'll meet me in Mexico."
There. It was all set. What a relief! No one would get killed. And everyone but Oviedo would be happy. Maybe even Oviedo would be happy ... But., but she was sitting there silently as if she hadn't heard what he'd said.
"How about it?" he now asked her with something of impatience, a suggestion of vehemence in his voice.
"You don't know Fredo," she answered quietly. "To hell with Fredo." He was now beginning to be angry. "Listen, baby," she said, "now don't be angry, baby. Now give me a chance, baby, will you?" "All right ... "
"All right," her voice echoed, "I'll do it. I'll go back. But I'll leave right away from Beaumont and ... "
Roughly his hands took hold of hers, then let go of them only to take hold of her breasts and squeeze them very hard.
"No, you're right, Rodney,"-her words were low, were wet; her voice was a husky moan-"I can't go back without having you. I can't, I can't ... "
He let go of her breasts.
"You're right. I won't go back from Beaumont. We'll go on to Houston. We'll ... "
Her hands were all over him as she whispered, "But you understand, don't you, that I have to call him?"
"Yes," he said, feeling more weary now than feeling anything else, "I understand ... "
He put his arms around her. He held her very close to him. Past the red and gold of her hair he stared out into the hot sunny wasteland of Texas.
6
The fan whirred above the bed as he lay there waiting for her to come out of the bathroom. He could hear it whir and whir in the half-darkened room, hear it and the traffic of Houston below, hear these sounds and the sound of her in the bathroom.
He lay there completely naked, naked and clean and refreshed, for as soon as the bellhop had left them she said, "I don't want you to see me yet, Rodney. And I don't want to see you yet, either." She had pushed him away from her as he drew her to him to kiss her. "No, Rodney. No!"
"But," he had said, "we ... "
"No! Now I'll unpack." Quickly, she opened his valise. As quickly, she found his dressing gown. "Here," she had said, "now go into the bathroom and get undressed and ... "
"Yes, I'll take a shower, too," he had said.
"And then I'll do the same ... "
Again he had tried to embrace her, but again she had pushed him away.
"No. I don't want to yet. I don't ... "
She lowered her eyes. She lowered her head. She looked timid, modest, and for all her flamboyance, virginal.
"O.K." he had said, beginning to see what she meant, and now he lay there, quiet but also excited, as he wondered if she would find that he had changed, too. Too? Maybe she hadn't changed. Maybe he hadn't, either. But he now saw his prick change, saw it rise slowly, saw it get stiff, get hard, get big, as he thought of her as she used to be and knew that it was only a matter of minutes before he would see her as she was now.
A minute more-two, three, four-he lay there looking at his big stiff prick as he listened to the rhythmic whir of the fan and to the sound of her moving about in the bathroom. The light in the curtained room was dim. The breeze made by the fan cooled his warm body. Lazily, he touched his prick. Lazily, he stretched his legs. Lazily, he took his hand away from his prick. Lazily, he closed his eyes.
Asleep, he dreamt that he was still in the bus and that Fortune had taken his cock in her mouth as all the passengers watched. She was on her knees in the aisle. He was trying to push her away from him. Her face was black, but her eyes were blue. Still Fortune, she was also Johnnie-Mae.
"No, no," he said, still asleep, then opened his eyes to see her astride his legs, caressing his knees as she licked his stiffening cock and his balls.
"No, no," he murmured and, quickly alert, he pretended to still be asleep as, moving his shoulders onto the pillow, keeping his eyes almost closed, he deliberately moaned, moaned very softly, like a child asleep, a child dreaming.
The light in the room was just light enough for him to see that her small breasts were as high and firm as before, her massive body as white. Her breasts hardly dangled as she inclined herself over his cock, as now she took hold of it and, pressing its stiffening thickness hard, began to suck it, suck it voraciously.
"No, no," he murmured again, squirming in an infantile way.
She stopped sucking and now, his eyes almost closed, he saw her lean forward, saw the flaming red tip of his now-stiff brown cock brush the smooth cool whiteness of her skin, caressing her chin, her neck, her tits, and ...
Then she was on top of him and his enormous cock was jammed between her legs, its stiff length pressed between her hard smooth thighs. He could feel the hair of her cunt against the hair of his cock. He could feel the hair of her head all over his chest and his face, and he closed his eyes tight to moan softly, still wanting her to think he was sleeping.
"Darling, darling, darling, darling," she whispered, her mouth somewhere near one of his ears.
He could feel her put her tongue in his ear now, feel her lick the outside of it, lick his cheek, then put her tongue to his lips and push it between them. She pushed it in and out of his mouth, pushed it in and out violently, but he hardly responded and, all at once, she was off him and ...
"Oh!" he cried as the whip slashed across his chest and he saw her standing above him by the side of the bed, holding the whip in her hand.
"Still playing games, aren't you?" she said.
Above him she stood there-as tall, as blonde, as beautiful, as wild and gorgeous, as ever; the only change that he could make out was a slight thickening of her body which made it even more Junoesque than the last time that he'd seen it.
"Still trying to get out of fucking me, aren't you?" she said, and he saw that the furious expression on her face (though he knew it was feigned) was the same magnificently cruel expression that she used to have whenever he had let her beat him.
He raised himself on his elbows and opened his eyes wide, making them as imploringly innocent as he had used to make them.
"Please," he said, "please, Fortune. Please don't hurt me ... "
Down the whip came again, and this time it hurt him harder as it struck his ribs. He grabbed hold of it. He tried to pull it out of her hand. But she held on tight and, as he dragged himself off the bed, all the while holding on to his end of the whip, he said, "It's the same whip, I see. The same one. Who else have you used it on?"
With this she let go of the whip and he fell back on the bed to sit on the edge of it as she got down on her knees and, her lips almost touching his rampant rod, looked up at him.
"Oh, Rodney," she said, her high cheekbone brushing against the hard red knob of his cock, "oh, Rodney" she said, almost gasping, "I only kept it for this. I only kept it for now. I ... "
"Liar!" he said, and pushed her away from him, so that she fell flat on her back on the floor.
Quickly, he got up to stand over her, his big cock flailing the air.
"Get up!" he shouted and threw the whip down at her.
She got up. She got up so quickly that before he knew it she had knocked him down with her big fists, knocked him down on the bed, where he lay sprawled out, his legs dangling, his feet still touching the floor.
"Turn over!" she cried, and raised the whip above her head. "Turn over!" she cried again as he moved, but only a little.
Not saying a word, he turned over. His hard cock was jammed under his belly. He lay there prone. She began to beat him.
"Oh, you bastard!" she cried, bringing the whip down hard across his bare shoulders, "I'll show you!" and she slashed him again, again and again, across his trembling shoulders, his back, his bare buttocks. Then, as he writhed there, the pleasure of pain making his hot stiff prick throb, he remembered what she was waiting for, so ...
He jumped up and, seizing her wrist, wrenched the whip from her hand.
"Down on your knees, bitch!" he cried, stepping back to slash the fangs of the long leather whip across her smooth naked thighs.
"Fuck you, you bastard!" she shouted, and now, as they had done so many times in the past, they began to fight, to claw one another with their fingers, to hit one another with their fists, to gouge one another with their knees, their feet, to bite one another with their teeth.
He had dropped the whip to the floor, and now as he punched her in the stomach and felt her punch him, he wondered if he should give up, give up first, allow her to win and, so, let her beat him again. But no ...
For now, as he punched her in the ribs and she punched him back, then tore at his hair and let go, she looked straight at him, her eyes full of tears, and, the wound of her big mouth quivering, said, "Oh, Rodney! Rodney! Beat me! Beat me!"
As she said this she ran from him, ran to the wall and flattened herself up against it, her white arms outspread above her head, her long golden hair spreading itself over her wide white shoulders and her broad back.
"Whip me! Whip me!" she moaned, moving her big wide hips from side to side, which caused her hard white ass to rhythmically undulate, as if she were fucking the wall.
"Beat me! Whip me! Make me bleed!"
He picked up the whip. Stepping back, he slashed it across her writhing buttocks. Then he raised it again to slash it across the tresses of hair that nearly reached them.
"Oh!" she moaned, "Oh! Oh! Oh ... ! "
He went up to her. The throbbing tip of his big hard tool touched her ass. He separated her hair. Now her broad back lay white and exposed. She shoved her ass against his cock. He dropped the whip. Then, seizing her by the cheeks of her ass, he made the crevice between them wider. Hard now, he drove his big cock between the soft cheeks.
"Oh my God," she murmured as he dug his fingernails into the soft white flesh of her ass and jabbed his big brown cock into her.
Quickly, however, as he dug his cock into her, so, now, he pulled his cock out of her and, bending down, picked up the whip again to step back and lash her as hard as he could across her bare shoulders; and as he lashed her, lashed her again, her round ass jerked back, seeming, as if by itself, to be seeking his cock.
"Oh, put it back in again! Bugger me! Bugger me!" she cried and she wept as, now, he began to lash her more fiercely, bringing the whip down on her back and her buttocks with all the force that was in him.
In the dim light of the high-ceilinged room he could see the welts made by the whip, but he wanted to see them, her, more distinctly, so he stopped whipping her and, hurriedly, switched on the light.
"Please, Rodney, please, beat me some more! Bugger me! Beat me! Beat me to death!"
She couldn't wail or whine, for her voice was too low and husky, but the words came up from her throat liquidly mournful as, with a shudder that shook her white limbs, she pressed her big body as close to the wall as she could.
"Please, Rodney, please ... "
But seeing how red, wide, ugly, were the welts on her back and her buttocks, he let go of the whip and, his cock rearing in front of him, went up to her.
His cock resting stiff on the smooth curve of her ass, so that the length of it lay on her spine, he touched her on the shoulders, touched her gently, and, softly, said, "No, Fortune, no ... "
She turned her face from the wall half-way and he saw that her cheek was wet with tears. Her eye was closed.
"But," she said, "I deserve to be beaten to death. To death, to death, to death ... " "Why?"
"Because-" Abruptly she turned, banging his long stiff cock from her back to her stomach. She looked down at it, sank to her knees and, taking his cock in her hands, licked it, then looked at it. "Because," she said again, "I ever let another, another ... "-she seemed to choke-"Because," she now managed to say, "I was ever unfaithful to my rod."
Standing silently above her, he at first felt a glow of enormous pride, but then, glancing down at her as she still held his cock between her hands and stared at it, he began to wonder what she meant and so he said, "What do you mean?"
"I mean that I ever let anyone else fuck me after you ... "
"Were there many?" he asked, his voice edgy. "No-o-o ... " she said, and he knew that she was lying, so ...
Roughly, he pulled away from her, but she continued to kneel in front of him, her hands now holding the empty air where his cock had been.
"No," she said again, lowering her hands, raising her head to look up at him, but he still knew that she was lying, so ...
He leaned forward and slapped her face, slapped her so hard that she fell to the floor.
"And I suppose," he said (there was a snarl in his voice), "that you found other rods to worship.
Bigger ones, maybe?"
She half-raised herself to look up at him. The red and gold mass of her hair lay over her shoulders, half-concealing the smooth white flesh of her arms. Her tits bobbed up and down as, now, she shook her head with vehemence and he glanced down to see that her belly was as smooth and white as before, the hair of her cunt as golden. Again she shook her head, again and again, as she said, "But I told you, Rodney. I told you, darling. I told you that there is no other rod. Not in the whole world. Not in the ... "
She gulped. He watched the movement of her throat (it was very real) and then he watched her big blue eyes stare at his big brown cock. She gulped again. Then, still staring at his cock, she crawled closer to him and, with what seemed to be pain, pulled herself to her knees.
"My Lord," she said, "My Lord," she said again, staring at his cock, staring at it fixedly.
"No," he said, and again said, "No," as, bending down, he helped her to her feet.
"But ... "
"No," he said, "no, darling, no ... " Gently, he stroked her cheeks and touched her chin and ran his fingers down her neck before cupping her breasts in his hands. "No," he said again, "I don't want you to worship the rod. Not now ... "
"But," she said, "I ... "-her hands caressed his arms, his chest, his stomach, his thighs, then took hold of his cock-"but," she said, "I ... "
"I don't want you to worship it now," he said softly, "I just want to fuck you now. Fuck you and fuck you ... "
"Oh, Rodney ... "
Long they kissed, his arms around her, hers around him. Then, taking her by the hand and leading her slowly to the bed, he lay her down and ...
For the next hour, as the fan whirred above them, he fucked her.
7
This was only Kelly's Restaurant in Houston, Texas. But as he looked at her he felt himself to be in Maxim's on the Rue Royalle in Paris, France. And instead of seeing the deliberately rough-and-ready decor of Kelly's Restaurant, the expensive planking, the unnecessary sawdust, the beams, the antlers, the red and white checked tablecloths, he saw low settees of claret-colored velvet and mirrors with gold frames that reached from carpets of red plush to ceilings of gold leaf where crystal chandeliers hung like grapy bunches of gorgeously glistening diamonds.
Sitting there on the leather-covered bench that fit into the fine-grained wood of Kelly's wall, he leaned close to her, and closer, remembering how she had adored the chocolate bonbon elegance of the Paris Opera House with its pistachio-green roof that looked like an overstuffed confection made by Louis Sherry, and of how she had reveled in the soft smooth silken satiny, near-to-silent, imperceptibly moth-eaten, luxury of Larue, of Laperouse, and other dernier siecle restaurants.
The Lalique fountains at the Rond Point had sent her into ecstasies. The marble at the Cafe" Weber, at Fouquet's, had pleased her, too. As had the marble, the gold, the silk, the glass, everywhere that they had been. As had the velvet, the satin, the silver, the shine, the luster, the gloss, the glitter, the cherubined ceilings, the wide vistas, the sweeping promenades.
The Champs-Elysses seemed to have been paved for her by Louis the Fifteenth, the Grands Boulevards especially laid out for her by Napoleon the Third and Baron Haussmann. And when they had ridden in the open carriage at Versailles he had felt himself to be back where she belonged (and even be belonged)-back in the la-dee-dah-ta-rah-rah-boom-dee-yay gay eighteen-nineties with (naturellement) plenty of bills in his billfold (it didn't much matter what kind of bills they were, just so long as he could puff steadily, serenely, on his long slim panatela and rest gloved hands upon his long slim sword-slim walking stick).
Oh-he leaned very close to her now-she had been, still was, his deflowered Floradora, his dee-lush-ous, dee-love-lee, dee ... lights were low in Kelly's Restaurant. He watched her (Eureka! N-o-o ... Jeritza! She was his "Girl of the Golden West") as, with exaggerated daintiness, she lifted the oyster fork to her open lips.
"Good?" he asked.
"Good," she said as she popped the spinach-draped baked oyster into her mouth.
He moved an inch away from her and looked at the oval platter of Oysters Rockefeller. He moved another inch away from her as he heard the chompy sound made by her big-boned jaws while masticating. Suddenly the nineteenth century receded. Suddenly (how many times had he fucked her this afternoon and this evening?) he felt sated. With a feeling of faint distaste he forked an oyster (were oysters an aphrodisiac?) from the chunky bed of salt on the platter, and as it slid down his throat he watched her out of the corner of his eye.
Thirstily, with a greedy gesture of her mouth, she was drinking off the last of the white wine in her glass, licking the rim of it as she had licked the tip of his cock a little earlier, licking, licking, as she had greedily licked up the last few drops of his hot white sperm. Oh, lush she was, yes, and plush, but not so dee-lush-ous, so dee-love-lee, now. No, she was almost mollusk mouthed, redly so, all smeared, he thought, thinking, too, of the disorderly hotel room they had left a half hour or so ago, of the helter-skelter profusion of powder puffs and pink brassieres, of the high-heeled shoes and black lace panties, of the crumpled pieces of Kleenex and the lipstick stains all over the sheets.
He poured more wine into her glass, he poured more into his, deciding that it was a good thing, really, that tomorrow she was going back to Oviedo. For-he put the bottle back into the bucket-he was but beginning to-he took a slow sip of wine-bring order into his life, not to mention-he set his glass down-elegance. And what would it be, his life, were he to resume the old romantic relationship with her? Just-he lifted the glass to his lips again-an untidy succession (they had always, theatrically one-night standish, been moving from place to place) of disordered hotel rooms, of unmade beds, of rumpled sheets, of peach-colored powder patching the wetness of washbowls. And half-packed valises. And empty bottles. And brawls in bars. And ...
But why go on-he took a drink; once more he set his glass down-to tell of all the past disorderliness, the derangement and the disarray, the fly-by-night confusion that would return to him, that would become the setting of his life again? Yes, why go on to tell of the colorful but clouded and chaotic background (the buggerings, the beatings, he remembered now how once she had buggered him when he was drunk with one of those false cocks), yes, why go on to tell of the colorful but crazy background to all of that which once more would be his living, why go on to tell-he shuddered slightly-of the writing that he would never get written were he to let this reunion, however wonderful-(he gave her a guilty glance) it was in its way, be the prelude to what, were it to come about, he could only compare to the nostalgic revival of a waltz-tuned operetta, to a warmed-over wiener schnitzel served with a runny egg that had turned cold? And stale pale ale. And dry pumpernickel. And rancid butter. Yes-feeling himself to be a traitor to her, he glanced nervously at her now (she was gulping another oyster)-wonderful (he had to say it; she now fucked even more wildly than she used to), yes, wonderful in its way though it had been, this reunion must end tomorrow and never he repeated (after all, his goal had been gained; he had found out that she still loved him, still worshiped the rod, and that he could, if he wanted to, have her again). It was enough. But ...
Softly, he felt her fingers enclose his knee now, enclose it as if it were a rubber ball, then let go, then move up his leg along his thigh, slowly, seductively, until her fingers wound themselves around his big limp cock, and as he looked at her (she had wiped her lips) he saw (he felt his cock getting hard) that she was gazing at him with wide-eyed pensiveness, wondering ...
Was it enough? No, it wasn't, could never be, enough. More. His hand covered hers. More. He picked a piece of spinach from his teeth, then kissed her, caring (more and more and more and more and more and the more there was the less there was and the more there was the more there was the more the more the more the more) nothing for the people in Kelly's Restaurant who might be watching them, and ...
After the salad, as the waiter waited, he looked at her and ordered compote of apricots.
8
"Bus leaving at Gate Five for Beaumont, Lake Charles, and New Orleans! Bus leaving in five minutes for Beaumont, Lake Charles, and New Orleans! Gate Five ... ! "
Hollow, domesday hollow, domesday hollow, the dead voice sounded and resounded above the lively babble and the bustle in the waiting room as he stood there close to her, so close, his fear of Oviedo to the fore, his pity for him absent in the face of her fear of Oviedo, fear that was outweighed, he could so well see, by pity which-it flashed into his mind now-is (to paraphrase a Beaumont more living than Beaumont, Texas) the path that leadeth straight to every woman's love. So-calculatingly, he stepped away from her-should he show some signs of mournfulness now? Should he-"Gate Five! Gate Five!"-let "such sweet sorrow" fill his features "since now the hour is come at last"? But-"Lakes Charles! New Orleans!" (Oviedo, Oviedo, Oviedo ... )-"if we must, we must ... " and "since there's no help, come let us kiss and part ... " and ... and "the less said the better."
"Just say the word, darling, and I'll stay."
What word? What oh what oh what was the word? In the palm of his hand, so sweaty, he still held ... But was it Life? "No," he said to himself, and almost said it aloud.
"Bus leaving in three minutes at Gate Five for Beaumont, Lake Charles, and New Orleans! Gate Five ... ! "
O-with utter helplessness-the Gate is Five-and hopelessness-I dol-he took her in his arms (little carrot top, they had called her when she'd been a kid and buried his face in the orange mist of her hair helplessly, hopelessly, all the while thinking of how he'd have to go back (and back and back) to when he'd been a little kid, all the while mumbling, "You'll be in Mexico with me soon, sweetheart. Soon, soon, soon ... Just do it right now, do it right ... "
"You're right," he could hear her mumbling back to him, "You're right, you're right, you're right ... "
Bus leaving in two minutes at Gate Five for Beaumont, Lake Charles, and New Orleans! Gate Five ... ! "
O-she was crying-the Gate is Five-and he was trying-I do!-not to cry as-do you-he pushed her away from him-take this life as your lawful wife, I do! 0-one more embrace, one more "good-bye"-the Gate is Five, I do.
Blurry, the waiting room, as he watched her go through "Gate Five! Gate Five!" and "I do!" he said aloud, the people, the place, seeming to disappear with her, with her beautiful golden cunt, her wonderful white belly, as he heard the roar of the motor and, "All aboard! Gate Five! Bus leaving for Beaumont, Lake Charles, and New Orleans!"
. . .as he walked under the trees in the darkness of Mexico City, in the darkness of the Paseo de la Reforma, he was half tempted to turn back, to find the little cocksucker who had just been staring at him, to find him and let him suck his cock, to find him and bugger him harder than he had ever buggered Lisa or Fortune Riley, than he had ever buggered any woman (if this was possible). Women! They were just a great big pain in the ass ...
Yet as he thought of them in general, and of Lisa and Fortune in particular, he yearned, not for Lisa nor for Olivia nor for any woman he had ever known but ... Yes (damn it!) he yearned for Fortune, yearned and yearned and yearned for her, and ... Yes (damn it') he could feel himself getting a hard-on as he thought of her.
It was-he put his hand to his cock, took it away-six months now, six long months, since he had said good-bye to her in Houston, six long months during which he had done little except wait (and wait and wait and wait) for her. But, although she had been coming every other day, she never did (the bitch!; she'd probably come more than every other day up there in New Orleans). And so, at last, he had consented to go away with Lisa. But did he want to? Really? No!
Yes-he lit another cigarette-he was half tempted to turn back and-he laughed-turn queer. Yes, he was half tempted to do anything, even for a moment, that would cut in two, break, the entire moment of the present. To do anything but go through, uninterrupted, thinking all the way-what he needed was a drink-with this whole business of risking his neck by going to Tehuantepec. Huh!-risk his neck, Tehuantepec-It would be better to go back to New Orleans and risk his neck there.
It was-he took a deep drag on his Elegante-so dark here, so black, so liquid black, so quiet, so silent, so open yet so petaled by the ebon fragrance of the Mexican plateau, and the passersby seemed so more unknown, more alien, to him than the passersby in other cities. Click, click, honk, honk ... He could hear no sound except for these, muted by the overhanging branches of the trees, and the music of Jay Jalisco, no te rajes! in the distance, in the darkness, coming from the cantina where ... Lisa. How was she making out? He wondered, had she told Luis yet?
Fingering his collar, he rubbed his Adam's apple with his knuckle. Risk his neck, Tehuantepec ... He loosened his tie, let his hand fall to his side. Oh, to hell with Lisa, with Luis, with Mexico, with ... No-he quickened his pace-not to hell with Fortune!
Feeling his cock again, he thought of her, (of her cunt, her ass, her mouth) and-he stopped walking-wanted her, wanted her now. This was impossible, but ... Yes-he threw away his cigarette-he had to have her again! Had to!
He crossed to the other side of the Paseo and sat down on a bench in a corner that was darker than the corner where he'd been sitting a few minutes earlier. Lighting another cigarette, he heard the word "chicito," and by the flame of the match he saw a fat woman with artificial flowers in her hair sitting at the other end of the decrepit bench. Saying something that he could not understand, she leered at him, revealing broken teeth, then lifted her skirts to reveal a black bushy growth of hair overlapped by rolls of fat that looked pastily white in the night.
Thinking of Fortune's golden cunt, he looked at her, continuing to hold the match, still lighted, between his fingers. He held it until a blob of hot wax plopped into the upturned palm of his hand. Then, throwing the match to the ground, he returned the pack of Elegantes to the pocket of his packet and let the cigarette that he had lighted dangle loosely from his lips.
A small noiseless breeze rustled the leaves of the tall trees that lined the avenue. Intensely now, sitting in the darkness, sitting there so silently, he felt all the early-evening loneliness of all the earth's unmated, and as, again, he looked at the woman he said too himself, "Why not?" and so, as casually, he said to her, "Come here."
In an instant, the old fat whore ways standing in front of him.
"Si, chicito?"
Mustering up (and mastering) the best Spanish slang that he could, he said, "I want a blow job."
"Si, chicito! Come with me ... "
"No, get down on your knees, get down on your knees and suck me off here."
"Here? But ... "
"Here." He took some money out of his pocket and gave it to her. "Here." "Si, senor."
The woman looked to the right. She looked to the left. Then, slowly, she bent her fat body forward and as she sank to her knees she began to unzip his trousers.
Rodney leaned back and spread his legs. Then, as the whore's broken teeth closed round his stiffening rod, he thought of Fortune, of her heavily beautiful red lips, and all at once he knew that tonight, this very night, he'd pack his bags and leave for New Orleans.
This decided, he relaxed and let the old whore suck his cock.
